“Always blaming me,” she said, tenderly.  “But even if you hadn’t married me, I suspect that sooner or later you’d have decided for being a large man in a valley rather than a very small imitation man on a mountain.”  Then, after a moment’s thought, and with sudden radiance:  “But a man as big as you are wouldn’t be let stay in the valley, no matter how hard he tried.”

He laughed.  “I’ve no objection to the mountain top,” said he.  “But I see that, if I get there, it’ll have to be in my own way.  Let’s go out and mail the letter.”

And they went down the drive together to the post box, and, strolling back, sat under the trees in the moonlight until nearly midnight, feeling as if they had only just begun life together—­and had begun it right.

* * * * *

When Charles Whitney had read the letter he tore it up, saying half-aloud and contemptuously, “I was afraid there was too big a streak of fool in him.”  Then, with a shrug:  “What’s the use of wasting time on that little game—­especially as I’d probably have left the university the whole business in my will.”  He wrote Scarborough, proposing that they delay the assessment until he had a chance to look further into the railway situation.  “I begin to understand the troubles down there, now that I’ve taken time to think them over.  I feel I can guarantee that no assessment will be necessary.”

And when the railways had mysteriously and abruptly ceased to misbehave, and the strike had suddenly fizzled out, he offered his stock to the university as a gift.  “I shall see to it,” he wrote, “that the company is not molested again, but is helped in every way.”  Arthur was for holding off, but Scarborough said, “No.  He will keep his word.”  And Scarborough was right in regarding the matter as settled and acceptance of the splendid gift as safe.  Whitney had his own code of honesty, of honor.  It was not square dealing, but doing exactly what he specifically engaged to do.  He would have stolen anything he could—­anything he regarded as worth his while.  On the other hand, he would have sacrificed nearly all, if not all, his fortune, to live up to the letter of his given word.  This, though no court would have enforced the agreement he had made, though there was no written record of it, no witness other than himself, the other party, and the Almighty—­for Charles Whitney believed in an Almighty God and an old-fashioned hell and a Day of Judgment.  He conducted his religious bookkeeping precisely as he conducted his business bookkeeping, and was confident that he could escape hell as he had escaped the penitentiary.

CHAPTER XXII

VILLA D’ORSAY