“All the time, and you never told me?”

“All the time and I never told you.  I’d almost forgotten when you offered me that secretaryship, but I knew it when I let you engage me; I knew it before I came down.  I never would have come if I’d realized what it meant, but when I did know, I stayed all the same.”

“What do you think you ought to have done?”

“Of course—­I ought to have gone away—­since I couldn’t be honest and tell you.”

“And why” (she said it very gently but with no change in her attitude), “why couldn’t you be honest and tell me?”

“I’m not sure that I’d any right to tell you what I hadn’t any right to know.  I’m only sure of one thing—­as I did know, I oughtn’t to have stayed.  But,” he reiterated sorrowfully, “I did stay.”

“You stayed to help me.”

“Yes; with all my dishonesty I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t made myself believe that.  As it’s turned out, I’ve helped to ruin you.”

“Please—­please don’t.  As far as I’m concerned you’ve nothing to reproach yourself with.  Your position was a very difficult one.”

“I ought never to have got into it.”

“Still, you did your best.”

“My best!  You can’t say I did what an honourable man would have done; I mean at the beginning.”

“No—­no.  I’m afraid I can’t say that.”

He did not expect anything but sincerity from her, neither did he desire that her sense of honour should be less fine than his.  But he longed for some word of absolution, some look even that should reinstate him in his self-esteem; and it seemed to him that there was none.

“You can’t think worse of me than I think myself,” he said, and turned mournfully away.

She sat suddenly upright, with one hand on the arm of her chair, as if ready to rise and cut off his retreat.

“Wait,” she said.  “Have you any idea what you are going to do?”

The question held him within a foot’s length of her chair, where the light fell full on his face.

“I only know I’m not going back to the shop.”

“You were in earnest, then?  It really has come to that?”

“It couldn’t very well come to anything else.”

She looked up at him gravely, realizing for the first time, through her own sorrow, the precise nature and the consequences of his action.  He had burnt his ships, parted with his means of livelihood, in a Quixotic endeavour to serve her interests, and redeem his own honour.

“Forgive my asking, but for the present this leaves you stranded?”

“It leaves me free.”

She rose.  “I know what that means.  You won’t mind my paying my debts at once, instead of later?”

He stared stupidly, as if her words had stunned him.  She was seated at her writing table, and had begun filling in a cheque before he completely grasped the horrible significance of what she had said.