“Do you mean you’ve been lying to me?” he asked.

“Just what did you tell him, Christine?” said Riatt, finding it easier and easier to be calm and protecting as his adversary grew more violent.

Christine looked up at him with the innocence of a child.  “I told him that we did not love each other, and that our engagement was really broken, but that no one was to know until March.”

“Why did you tell him that?”

“It’s the truth, Max—­almost the truth.”

“Almost the truth!” cried Linburne.  “Do you want me to think you care something for this man after all?”

“In the simple section of the country from which I come,” observed Riatt, “we often care a good deal for the people we marry.”

Linburne turned on him.  “Really, Mr. Riatt,” he said, “you don’t take an idea very quickly.  You have just heard Miss Fenimer say that she did not love you and that she considered your engagement at an end.”

“I heard her say she had told you that.”

“You mean to imply that she said what was untrue?”

“I could answer your question better,” said Riatt, “if I understood a little more clearly what your connection with this whole situation is.”

“The connection of any old friend who does not care to see Miss Fenimer neglected and humiliated,” answered Linburne, all the more hotly because he knew it was an awkward question.

Perhaps the young poet had not been so wrong in attaching the name of Helen to Miss Fenimer, for she sat now as calmly interested in the conflict developing before her, as Helen when she sat on the walls of Troy and designated the Greek heroes for the amusement of her newer friends.

“May I ask, Mr. Riatt, what rights in the matter you consider that you have?” Linburne pursued.

For Riatt, too, the question was an awkward one, but he had his answer ready.  “The rights,” he said, “of a man who certainly was once engaged to Miss Fenimer, and who came East ignorant that the engagement was already at an end.”

Christine laughed.  “Very neatly put,” she said.

“Neatly put,” exclaimed Linburne.  “You talk as if we were playing a game.”

“You have the reputation of playing all games well, my dear Lee,” she returned.  The obvious fact that she was enjoying the interview, made both men eager to end it—­but, unfortunately, they wished to end it in diametrically opposite ways.

“Christine,” said Linburne, “will you ask Mr. Riatt to be so kind as to let me have ten minutes alone with you?”

Riatt spoke to her also.  “I will do exactly as you say,” he said, “but you understand that if I go now, I shall not come back.”

Christine smiled.  “Is that a threat or a promise?” she asked, the sweetness of her smile almost taking away the sting of her words.

Seeing that she hesitated, Riatt went on:  “Since I have come more than a thousand miles to see you, don’t you think you might suggest to Mr. Linburne that he let me have my visit undisturbed?”