“Now just listen to me,” said he.  “You are without exception the most dangerous woman that I have ever met.  All women are dangerous, but you are an acute peril.”

“Yes,” Mimi admitted, “Mr. Carrel Quire used to talk like that.  I got quite used to it.”

“Did he really?  Well, I think all the better of him, then.  The mischief with you is that your motives are good.  But a good motive is no excuse for a criminal act, and still less excuse for an idiotic act.  I don’t suppose I shall do any good by warning you, yet I do hereby most solemnly warn you to mend your ways.  And I wish you to understand clearly that I am not a bit grateful to you.  In fact the reverse.”

Mimi stiffened herself.

“Perhaps you would prefer us to restore the missing part and start the clock striking again.  It would be perfectly easy.  We still have our own key to the tower and we could do it to-night.  I am sure it will be at least a week before the church-wardens send an expert clock-maker up the tower.”

In that moment Mr. Prohack had a distressing glimpse into the illogical peculiarities of the human conscience, especially his own.  He knew that he ought to accept Mimi’s offer, since it would definitely obviate the possible consequences of a criminal act and close a discreditable incident.  But he thought of his bad nights instead of thinking of Mimi’s morals and the higher welfare of society.

“No,” he said.  “Let sleeping clocks lie.”  And he saw that Mimi read the meanness of his soul and was silently greeting him as a fellow-sinner.

She surprised him by saying: 

“I assure you, Mr. Prohack, that my sole idea—­that our sole idea—­was to make the house more possible for you.”  And as she uttered these words she gazed at him with a sort of delicious pouting, challenging reproach.

What a singular remark, he thought!  It implied a comprehension of the fact, which he had considerately never disclosed, that he objected to the house in toto and would have been happier in his former abode.  And, curiously, it implied further that she comprehended and sympathised with his objections.  She knew she had not done everything necessary to reconcile him to the noble mansion, but she had done what she could—­and it was not negligible.

“Nothing of the kind,” said he.  “You simply had no ‘sole idea.’  When I admitted just now that your motives were good I was exaggerating.  Your motives were only half good, and if you think otherwise you are deceiving yourself; you are not being realistic.  In that respect you are no better than anybody else.”

“What was my other motive, then?” she enquired submissively, as if appealing for information to the greatest living authority on the enigmas of her own heart.

“Your other motive was to satisfy your damnable instinct for dubious and picturesque adventure,” said Mr. Prohack.  “You were pandering to the evil in you.  If you could have stopped the clock from striking by walking down Bond Street in Mrs. Slipstone’s clothes and especially her boots, would you have done it?  Certainly not.  Of course you wouldn’t.  Don’t try to come the self-sacrificing saint over me, because you can’t do it.”