“He has an appointment with me, Adelaide.”

“You don’t understand, Vin.  You mustn’t see him.”

Wayne was by this time in the room.

“But I wish to see him, my dear Adelaide, and,” Farron added, “I wish to see him alone.”

“No,” she answered, with a good deal of excitement; “that you cannot.  This is my affair, Vincent—­the affair of my child.”

He looked at her for a second, and then opening the door into his bedroom, he said to Wayne: 

“Will you come in here?” The door was closed behind the two men.

Wayne was not a coward, although he had dreaded his interview with Adelaide; it was his very respect for Farron that kept him from feeling even nervous.

“Perhaps I ought not to have asked you to see me,” he began.

“I’m very glad to see you,” answered Farron.  “Sit down, and tell me the story as you see it from the beginning.”

It was a comfort to tell the story at last to an expert.  Wayne, who had been trying for twenty-four hours to explain what underwriting meant, what were the responsibilities of brokers in such matters, what was the function of such a report as his, felt as if he had suddenly groped his way out of a fog as he talked, with hardly an interruption but a nod or a lightening eye from Farron.  He spoke of Benson.  “I know the man,” said Farron; of Honaton, “He was in my office once.”  Wayne told how Mathilde, and then he himself, had tried to inform Mrs. Farron of the definiteness of their plans to be married.

“How long has this been going on?” Farron asked.

“At least ten days.”

Farron nodded.  Then Wayne told of the discovery of the proof at the printer’s and his hurried meeting in the park to tell Mathilde.  Here Farron stopped him suddenly.

“What was it kept you from going through with it just the same?”

“You’re the first person who has asked me that,” answered Pete.

“Perhaps you did not even think of such a thing?”

“No one could help thinking of it who saw her there—­”

“And you didn’t do it?”

“It wasn’t consideration for her family that held me back.”

“What was it?”

Pete found a moral scruple was a difficult motive to avow.

“It was Mathilde herself.  That would not have been treating her as an equal.”

“You intend always to treat her as an equal?”

Wayne was ashamed to find how difficult it was to answer truthfully.  The tone of the question gave him no clue to the speaker’s own thoughts.

“Yes, I do,” he said; and then blurted out hastily, “Don’t you believe in treating a woman as an equal?”

“I believe in treating her exactly as she wants to be treated.”

“But every one wants to be treated as an equal, if they’re any good.”  Farron smiled, showing those blue-white teeth for an instant, and Wayne, feeling he was not quite doing himself justice, added, “I call that just ordinary respect, you know, and I could not love any one I didn’t respect.  Could you?”