“Duty!  Pooh!  That sort of little creature has no duty—­the word doesn’t apply to it.  Evie is the most skilful mixture of irresponsible impulse and shrewd calculation you’ll find in New York.  She’ll use both her gifts with perfect heartlessness, and yet in such a way that even her guardian angel won’t know just where to find fault with her.”

“But she must marry Mr. Ford—­now.”

He was too busy with his own side of the subject to notice that her assertion had the intensity of a cry.  He had a man’s lack of interest in another man’s love-affairs while he was blissfully absorbed in his own.

“You might as well tell a swallow that it must migrate—­now,” he laughed.  “Poor Ford will feel it, I’ve no doubt; but we shall make up to him for a good deal of it.  We’re going to pull him through.”

For the instant her anxiety was diverted into another channel.  “Does that mean that Amalia Gramm has told you anything?”

“She’s told us everything.  I thought she would.  I don’t feel at liberty to give you the details before they come out at the proper time and place; but there’s no harm in saying that my analysis of the old woman’s psychological state was not so very far wrong.  There’s no question about it any longer.  We’ll pull him through.  And, by George, he’s worth it!”

The concluding exclamation, uttered with so much sincerity, took her by surprise, transmuting the pressure about her heart into a mist of sudden tears.  Tears came to her rarely, hardly, and seldom with relief.  She was especially unwilling that Conquest should notice them now; but the attempt to dash them away only caused them to fall faster.  She could see him watching her in a kind of sympathetic curiosity, slightly surprised in his turn at the unexpected emotion, and trying to divine its cause.  Unable to bear his gaze any longer, she got up brusquely from her chair, retreating into the bay-window, where—­the curtains being undrawn—­she stood looking down on the sea of lights, as beings above the firmament might look down on stars.  He waited a minute, and came near her only when he judged that he might do so discreetly.

“You’re unnerved,” he said, with tender kindliness.  “That’s why you’re upset.  You’ve had too much on your mind.  You’re too willing to take all the care on your own shoulders, and not let other people hustle for themselves.”

She was pressing her handkerchief against her lips, so she made no reply.  The moment seemed to him one at which he might go forward a little more boldly.  All the circumstances warranted an advance from his position of reserve.

“You need me,” he ventured to say, with that quiet assurance which in a lover means much.  “I understand you as no one else does in the world.”

Her brimming eyes gave him a look which was only pathetic, but which he took to be one of assent.