It was not his way to beat about the bush, and he gave battle at once.  He said, standing, to say it more easily: 

“You know why I came here to-day?  It was the first chance I’ve had since that—­unfortunate evening.  I came on Ste. Marie’s account.”

Miss Benham said a weak “Oh!” And because she was nervous and overwrought, and because the thing meant so much to her, she said, cheaply:  “He owes me no apologies.  He has a perfect right to act as he pleases, you know.”

The Englishman frowned across at her.  “I didn’t come to make apologies,” said he.  “I came to explain.  Well, I have explained—­Baron de Vries and I together.  That’s just how it happened.  And that’s just how Ste. Marie takes things.  The point is that you’ve got to understand it.  I’ve got to make you.”

The girl smiled up at him dolefully.  “You look,” she said, “as if you were going to beat me if necessary.  You look very warlike.”

“I feel warlike,” the man said, nodding.  He said:  “I’m fighting for a friend to whom you are doing, in your mind, an injustice.  I know him better than you do, and I tell you you’re doing him a grave injustice.  You’re failing altogether to understand him.”

“I wonder,” the girl said, looking very thoughtfully down at the table before her.

“I know,” said he.

Quite suddenly she gave a little overwrought cry, and she put up her hands over her face.  “Oh, Richard!” she said, “that day when he was here!  He left me—­oh, I cannot tell you at what a height he left me!  It was something new and beautiful.  He swept me to the clouds with him.  And I might—­perhaps I might have lived on there.  Who knows?  But then that hideous evening!  Ah, it was too sickening:  the fall back to common earth again!”

“I know,” said the man, gently—­“I know.  And he knew, too.  Directly he’d seen you he knew how you would feel about it.  I’m not pretending that it was of no consequence.  It was unfortunate, of course.  But the point is, it did not mean in him any slackening, any stooping, any letting go.  It was a moment’s incident.  We went to the wretched place by accident after dinner.  Ste. Marie saw those childish lunatics at play, and for about two minutes he played with them.  The lady in the blue hat made it appear a little more extreme, and that’s all.”

Miss Benham rose to her feet and moved restlessly back and forth.  “Oh, Richard,” she said, “the golden spell is broken—­the enchantment he laid upon me that day.  I’m not like him, you know.  Oh, I wish I were!  I wish I were!  I can’t change from hour to hour.  I can’t rise to the clouds again after my fall to earth.  It has all—­become something different.  Don’t misunderstand me!” she cried.  “I don’t mean that I’ve ceased to care for him.  No, far from that!  But I was in such an exalted heaven, and now I’m not there any more.  Perhaps he can lift me to it again.  Oh yes, I’m sure he can, when I see him once more; but I wanted to go on living there so happily while he was away!  Do you understand at all?”