“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m writing thirty instead of fifteen, because that is what you ought to have asked for in the beginning.  You see I am more business-like now than I was then.”

He smiled.

“And do you really suppose I am going to take it?”

He meant his smile to be bitter, but somehow it was not.  After all, she was so helpless and so young.

“Of course you are going to take it.”

“I needn’t ask what you think of me.”

This time the smile was bitterness itself.

“But it’s yours—­what I owe you.  I’m only paying it to-day instead of some other day.”

“But you have not got to pay me anything.  What do you think you’re paying me for?”

“For your work, for the catalogue, of course.”

“That infamous catalogue ought never to have been made—­not by me at any rate.”

“But you made it.  You made it for me.  I ordered it.”

“You ordered it from my father.  In ordinary circumstances you would have owed him fifteen pounds.  But even he wouldn’t take it now.  I think he considers himself quite sufficiently paid.”

“You are mixing up two things that are absolutely distinct.”

“No.  I’m only refusing to be mixed up with them.”

“But you are mixed up with them.”

He laughed at that shot, as a brave man laughs at a hurt.

“You needn’t remind me of that.  I meant—­any more than I can help; though it may seem to you that I haven’t very much lower to sink.”

“Believe me, I don’t associate you with this wretched business.  I want you to forget it.”

“I can’t forget it.  If I could, it would only be by refusing to degrade myself further in connection with it.”

His words were clumsy and wild as the hasty terrified movements of a naked soul, trying to gather round it the last rags of decency and honour.

“There is no connection,” she added, more gently than ever, seeing how she hurt him.  “Don’t you see that it lies between you and me?”

He saw that as she spoke she was curling the cheque into a convenient form for slipping into his hand in the moment of leave-taking.

“Indeed—­indeed you must,” she whispered.

He drew back sharply.

“Miss Harden, won’t you leave me a shred of self-respect?”

“And what about mine?” said she.

It was too much even for chivalry to bear.

“That’s not exactly my affair, is it?”

He hardly realised the full significance of his answer, but he deemed it apt.  If, as she had been so careful to point out to him, her honour and his moved on different planes, how could her self-respect be his affair?

“It ought to be,” she murmured in a tone whose sweetness should have been a salve to any wound.  But he did not perceive its meaning any more than he had perceived his own, being still blinded by what seemed to him the cruelty and degradation of the final blow.