“Well,” she said, “if you wrote to Mr. Jewdwine, you did indeed do your best.”

The answer, on her part, was no less masterly in its way.  He could not help admiring its significant ambiguity.  It was both an act of justice, an assurance of her belief in him, and a superb intimation of her trust in Horace Jewdwine.  And it was not only superb, it was almost humble in that which it further confessed and implied—­her gratitude to him for having made that act of justice consistent with loyalty to her cousin.  How clever of her to pack so many meanings into one little phrase!

“I did it too late,” he said, emphasizing the point which served for Jewdwine’s vindication.

“Never mind that.  You did it.”

“Miss Harden, is it possible that you still believe in me?” The question was wrung from him; for her belief in him remained incredible.

“Why should it not be possible?”

“Any man of business would tell you that appearances are against me.”

“Well, I don’t believe in appearances; and I do believe in you.  You are not a man of business, you see.”

“Thank goodness, I’m not, now.”

“You never were, I think.”

“No.  And yet, I’m so horribly mixed up with this business, that I can never think of myself as an honest man again.”

She seemed to be considering whether this outburst was genuine or only part of his sublime pretence.

“And I could never think of you as anything else.  I should say, from all I have seen of you, that you are if anything too honest, too painfully sincere.”

("Yes, yes,” her heart cried out, “I believe in him, because he didn’t tell the truth about that letter to Horace.”  She could have loved him for that lie.)

He was now at liberty to part with her on that understanding, leaving her to think him all that was disinterested and honourable and fine.  But he could not do it.  Not in the face of her almost impassioned declaration of belief.  At that moment he was ready rather to fall at her feet in the torture of his shame.  And as he looked at her, tears came into his eyes, those tears that cut through the flesh like knives, that are painful to bring forth and terrible to see.

“I’ve not been an honest man, though.  I’ve no right to let you believe in me.”

Her face was sweeter than ever with its piteous, pathetic smile struggling through the white eclipse of grief.

“What have you done?”

“It’s not what I’ve done.  It’s what I didn’t do.  I told you that I knew the library was going to be sold.  I told you that yesterday, and you naturally thought I only knew it yesterday, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t see—­”

She paused, and his confession dropped into the silence with an awful weight.

“I knew—­all the time.”

She leaned back in her chair, the change of bodily posture emphasizing the spiritual recoil.