He had not seen Portia since the night when she had armed him for the final struggle with the enemy; he told himself that he should not see her again until the battle was fought and won.  But in no part of the struggle had he been suffered to lose sight of his obligation to her.  He had seen the chain lengthen link by link, and now the time was come for the welding of it into a shackle to bind.  He did not try to deceive himself, nor did he allow the glamour of false sentiment to blind him.  With an undying love for Elinor Brentwood in his heart, he knew well what was before him.  None the less, Portia should have her just due.

She was waiting for him when he entered the comfortable library.

“I knew you would come to-night,” she said cheerfully.  “I gave you a day to drive the nail—­and, O David! you have driven it well!—­another day to clinch it, and a third to recover from the effects.  Have you fully recovered?”

“I hope so.  I took the day for it, at all events,” he laughed.  “I am just out of bed, as you might say.”

“I can imagine how it took it out of you,” she assented.  “Not so much the work, but the anxiety.  Night before last, after Mr. Loring went away, I sat it out with the telephone, nagging poor Mr. Hildreth for news until I know he wanted to murder me.”

“How much did you get of it?” he asked.

“He told me all he dared—­or perhaps it was all he knew—­and it made me feel miserably helpless.  The little I could get from the Argus office was enough to prove that all your plans had been changed at the last moment.”

“They were,” he admitted; and he began at the beginning and filled in the details for her.

She heard him through without comment other than a kindling of the brown eyes at the climaxes of daring; but at the end she gave him praise unstinted.

“You have played the man, David, as I knew you would if you could be once fully aroused.  I’ve had faith in you from the very first.”

“It has been more than faith, Portia,” he asserted soberly.  “You have taken me up and carried me when I could neither run nor walk.  Do you suppose I am so besotted as not to realize that you have been the head, while I have been only the hand?”

“Nonsense!” she said lightly.  “You are in the dumps of the reaction now.  You mustn’t say things that you will be sorry for, later on.”

“I am going to say one thing, nevertheless; and will remain for you to make it a thing hard to be remembered, or the other kind.  Will you take what there is of me and make what you can of it?”

She laughed in his face.

“No, my dear David; no, no, no.”  And after a little pause:  “How deliciously transparent you are, to be sure!”

He would have been less than a man if his self-love had not been touched in its most sensitive part.

“I am glad if it amuses you,” he frowned.  “Only I meant it in all seriousness.”