He had known she wouldn’t reproach him, but he was deeply grateful to her for being so unaware that there was any grounds for reproach.  She understood the courage his renunciation had required.  That seemed to be what she cared for most.

At length he said to her: 

“Now I must go and get this off my chest with the firm.  Go home, and I’ll come as soon as ever I can.”

But here she shook her head.

“I couldn’t go home,” she answered.  “It might all come out before you arrived, and I could not listen to things that”—­she avoided naming her mother—­“that will be said about you, Pete.  Isn’t there somewhere I can wait while you have your interview?”

There was the outer office of Honaton & Benson.  He let her go with him, and turned her over to the care of David, who found her a corner out of the way, and left her only once.  That was to say to a friend of his in the cage:  “When you go out, cast your eye over Pete’s girl.  Somewhat of a peacherino.”

In the meantime Wayne went into Benson’s office.  There wasn’t a flicker of alarm on the senior partner’s face on seeing him.

“Hullo, Pete!” he said, “I thought you’d be packing your bags.”

“I’m not packing anything,” said Wayne.  “I’ve come to tell you I can’t go to China for you.  Mr. Benson.”

“Oh, come, come,” said the other, very paternally, “we can’t let you off like that.  This is business, my dear boy.  It would cost us money, after having made all our arrangements, if you changed your mind.”

“So I understand.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean just what you think I mean, Mr. Benson.”

Wayne would have said that he could never forget the presence under any circumstances of his future wife, waiting, probably nervously, in the outer office; but he did.  The interest of the next hour drove out everything else.  Honaton was sent for from the exchange, a lawsuit was threatened, a bribe—­he couldn’t mistake it—­offered.  He was told he might find it difficult to find another position if he left their firm under such conditions.

“On the contrary,” said Peter, firmly, “from what I have heard, I believe it will improve my standing.”

That he came off well in the struggle was due not so much to his ability, but to the fact that he now had nothing to lose or gain from the situation.  As soon as Benson grasped this fact he began a masterly retreat.  Wayne noticed the difference between the partners:  Honaton, the less able of the two, wanted to save the situation, but before everything else wanted to leave in Wayne’s mind the sense that he had made a fool of himself.  Benson, more practical, would have been glad to put Pete in jail if he could; but as he couldn’t do that, his interest was in nothing but saving the situation.  The only way to do this was to give up all idea of publishing any report.  He did this by assuming that Wayne had simply changed his mind or had at least utterly failed to convey his meaning in his written words.  He made this point of view very plausible by quoting the more laudatory of Wayne’s sentences; and when Pete explained that the whole point of his report was in the sentence that had been omitted, Benson leaned back, chuckling, and biting off the end of his cigar.