‘No,’ she answered at once.  ’It’s never silly to be kind, even to weevils.’

‘Thank you for thinking so,’ said Mr. Van Torp, in an oddly humble tone, and he began to drink his own tea.

If Margaret Donne could have suddenly found herself perched among the chimney-pots on the opposite roof, and if she had then looked at his face through the window, she would have wondered why she had ever felt a perfectly irrational terror of him.  It was quite plain that the lady in black velvet had no such impression.

‘You need not be so meek,’ she said, smiling.

She did not laugh often, but sometimes there was a ripple in her fresh voice that would turn a man’s head.  Mr. Van Torp looked at her in a rather dull way.

‘I believe I feel meek when I’m with you.  Especially just now.’

He swallowed the rest of his tea at a gulp, set the cup on the table, and folded his hands loosely together, his elbows resting on his knees; in this attitude he leaned forward and looked at the burning coals.  Again his companion watched his hard face with affectionate interest.

‘Tell me just how it happened,’ she said.  ’I mean, if it will help you at all to talk about it.’

‘Yes.  You always help me,’ he answered, and then paused.  ’I think I should like to tell you the whole thing,’ he added after an instant.  ‘Somehow, I never tell anybody much about myself.’

‘I know.’

She bent her handsome head in assent.  Just then it would have been very hard to guess what the relations were between the oddly assorted pair, as they sat a little apart from each other before the grate.  Mr. Van Torp was silent now, as if he were making up his mind how to begin.

In the pause, the lady quietly held out her hand towards him.  He saw without turning further, and he stretched out his own.  She took it gently, and then, without warning, she leaned very far forward, bent over it and touched it with her lips.  He started and drew it back hastily.  It was as if the leaf of a flower had settled upon it, and had hovered an instant, and fluttered away in a breath of soft air.

‘Please don’t!’ he cried, almost roughly.  ’There’s nothing to thank me for.  I’ve often told you so.’

But the lady was already leaning back in the old easy-chair again as if she had done nothing at all unusual.

‘It wasn’t for myself,’ she said.  ’It was for all the others, who will never know.’

‘Well, I’d rather not,’ he answered.  ’It’s not worth all that.  Now, see here!  I’m going to tell you as near as I can what happened, and when you know you can make up your mind.  You never saw but one side of me anyhow, but you’ve got to see the other sooner or later.  No, I know what you’re going to say—­all that about a dual nature, and Jekyll and Hyde, and all the rest of it.  That may be true for nervous people, but I’m not nervous.  Not at all.  I never was.  What