“What are you going to do?” said Saltash.

Bunny hesitated, his boyish face a white mask of misery.

Saltash reached out a second time and touched him lightly, almost caressingly, with the point of his switch.  “What’s the matter with you, Bunny?” he said.  “Think I’ve lied to you?”

Bunny met his look.  “I don’t want to quarrel with you,” he said.  “It isn’t—­somehow it isn’t—­worth it.”

“Thanks!” said Saltash, and briefly laughed.  “You place my friendship at a pretty high figure then.  Tell me what you’re going to do!”

“What is it to you what I do?” A quick gleam shone for an instant in Bunny’s eyes, dispelling the look of stricken misery.  “I’m not asking you to help me.”

“I’ve grasped that,” said Saltash.  “But even so, I may be able to lend a hand.  As you say, there is not much point in our quarrelling.  There’s nothing to quarrel about that I can see—­except that you’ve called me a liar for no particular good reason!”

“Do you object to that?” said Bunny.

Saltash made a careless gesture.  “Perhaps—–­as you say—­it isn’t worth it.  All the same, I’ve a certain right to know what you propose to do, since, I gather, I have not managed to satisfy you.”

“A right!” flashed Bunny.

“Yes, a right.”  Saltash’s voice was suddenly and suavely confident.  “You may forget—­or possibly you may remember—­that I gave my protection to Nonette on the day she came to me for it, and I have never withdrawn it since.  What matters to her—­matters to me.”

“I see.”  Bunny stood stiffly facing him.  “I am responsible to you, am I?”

“That is what I am trying to convey,” said Saltash.

The fire in Bunny’s eyes leapt high for a moment or two, then died down again.  Had Jake been his opponent, he would have flung an open challenge, but somehow Saltash, with whom he had never before striven in his life, was less easy to resist.  In some subtle fashion he seemed able to evade resistance and yet to gain his point.

He gained his point on this occasion.  Almost before he knew it, Bunny had yielded.

“I am going to her,” he said, “to ask her for the whole truth—­about her past.”

“Is any woman capable of telling the truth to that extent?” questioned Saltash.

“I shall know if she doesn’t,” said Bunny doggedly.

“And will that help?” The note of mockery that was never long absent from his voice sounded again.  “Isn’t it possible—­sometime—­to try to know too much?  There is such a thing as looking too closely, mon ami.  And then we pay the price.”

“Do you imagine I could ever be satisfied not knowing?” said Bunny.

Saltash shrugged his shoulders.  “I merely suggested that you are going the wrong way to satisfy yourself.  But that is your affair, not mine.  The gods have sent you a gift, and because you don’t know what it is made of, you are going to pull it to pieces to find out.  And presently you will fling it away because you cannot fit it together again.  You don’t realize—­you never will realize—­that the best things in life are the things we never see and only dimly understand.”