It was a dangerous pastime for Kent; perilous, and subversive of many things.  One of his meliorating comforts had been the thought that however bitter his own disappointment was, Elinor at least was happy.  But in this new-old field of talk a change came over her and he was no longer sure she was entirely happy.  She was saying things with a flavor akin to cynicism in them, as thus: 

“Do you remember how we used to go into raptures of pious indignation over the make-believe sentiment of the summer man and the summer girl?  I recollect your saying once that it was wicked; a desecration of things which ought to be held sacred.  It isn’t so very long ago, but I think we were both very young that summer—­years younger than we can ever be again.  Don’t you?”

“Doubtless,” said David Kent.  He was at a pass in which he would have agreed with her if she had asserted that black was white.  It was not weakness; it was merely that he was absorbed in a groping search for the word which would fit her changed mood.

“We have learned to be more charitable since,” she went on; “more charitable and less sentimental, perhaps.  And yet we prided ourselves on our sincerity in that young time, don’t you think?”

“I, at least, was sincere,” he rejoined bluntly.  He had found the mood-word at last:  it was resentment; though, being a man, he could see no good reason why the memories of the Croydon summer should make her resentful.

She was not looking at him when she said:  “No; sincerity is always just.  And you were not quite just, I think.”

“To you?” he demanded.

“Oh, no; to yourself.”

Portia Van Brock’s accusation was hammering itself into his brain. You have marred her between you....  For your sake she can never be quite all she ought to be to him; for his sake she could never be quite the same to you.  A cold wave of apprehension submerged him.  In seeking to do the most unselfish thing that offered, had he succeeded only in making her despise him?

The question was still hanging answerless when there came the sound of a door opening and closing, and Ormsby stood looking in upon them.

“We needn’t keep these sleepy young persons out of bed any longer,” he announced briefly; and the coadjutor said good-night and joined him at once.

“What luck?” was David Kent’s anxious query when they were free of the house and had turned their faces townward.

“Just as much as we might have expected.  Mrs. Hepzibah refuses point-blank to sell her stock—­won’t talk about it.  ’The idea of parting with it now, when it is actually worth more than it was when we bought it!’” he quoted, mimicking the thin-lipped, acidulous protest.  “Later, in an evil minute, I tried to drag you in, and she let you have it square on the point of the jaw—­intimated that it was a deal in which some of you inside people needed her block of stock to make you whole.  She did, by Jove!”