None of this, of course, came to the surface at all in the scene between them.  She was gentler than was her wont with him, very appealing, subdued nearer to his own scale of manners than he had ever seen her before.  But she did not, for a fact, allow him much time to think.

He asked her, with a touch of embarrassment, whether John was fully in her confidence concerning this startling project, and if she had won his assent to it.

“He knows all about it,” she said—­and with no consciousness of a suppressio veri here.  “We hardly talked of anything else all last night.  I didn’t get to sleep till four.  He doesn’t like it, but then you couldn’t expect he would.  For that matter neither do I. Oh, you don’t know how I hate it!  But I think he sees it has to be.  Anyhow, he didn’t try very hard to keep me from going on with it—­And Mary, of course, is perfectly satisfied.”

Even his not very alert ear caught something equivocal in those last sentences, and he looked at her sharply.

“Oh, I’m worn to ribbons over it!” she exclaimed, and this touch of apology served for the tearing edge there had been in her voice.  “I couldn’t let him see how I feel about it.  It would be a sort of relief to have it settled.  That’s why I came straight to you to-day.”

He tried, but rather feebly, to temporize.  We mustn’t let haste drive us farther than we really wanted to go.  The matter of drawing the formal contract, for instance, must be attended with all possible legal safe-guards, especially when we were dealing with a person whose honor was perhaps dubitable.

“I thought we might go round to see Rodney Aldrich about it, now,” she said.  “He’s about the best there is in that line, isn’t he?  Why don’t you telephone to his office and find out if he’s there.”

This seemed as good a straw as any to clutch at.  The chance of catching as busy a man as Aldrich with a leisure half hour was very slim.  The recording angel who guarded his wicket gate would probably give them an appointment for some day next week, and this would leave time for a confirmatory talk with John.  But, unluckily, Rodney was there and would be glad to see Mrs. Wollaston as soon as she could be brought round.

“Then, that’s all right,” Paula said with a sigh of relief.  “So if you really believe I’ll keep my word and don’t mind putting up the money for me, it’s as good as settled.”

There was one more question on his tongue.  “Does John know that you have come to me for it?” But this, somehow, he could not force himself to ask.  Implicitly she had already answered it—­hadn’t she?

“Of course I believe, in you, in everything, my dear Paula.  And I’m very much—­touched, that you should have come to me.  And my only hope is that it may turn out to have been altogether for the best.”

And there was that.