“But I don’t see that that need distress you.  You wouldn’t care; and as for Dorothea, she’s got the pluck of a soldier.  Depend upon it, she sees the whole situation already, and is prepared to face it.  That’s part of the difference between a woman and a man. You can go into a thing like this without looking ahead, because you know that, whatever the opposition, you can keep it down.  A woman is too weak for that.  She must count every danger beforehand.  Dorothea has done that.  This isn’t going to be a leap in the dark for her; it wouldn’t be for any girl of her intelligence and social instincts.  She knows what she’s doing, and she’s doing it for you.  She has made her sacrifice, and made it willingly, before she consented to take this step at all.  She crossed her Rubicon without saying anything to you about it, and you needn’t consider her any more.”

“Well, I like that!” he said, in an injured tone, thrusting his hands into his overcoat pockets and beginning to move along the terrace.

“Yes; I thought you would,” she agreed, walking by his side.  “It shows what she’s willing to give up for you.  It shows even more than that.  It shows how she loves you.  Dorothea is not a girl who holds society lightly, and if she renounces it—­”

“Oh, but, come now, Mrs. Eveleth!  It isn’t going to be as bad as that.”

“It isn’t going to be as bad as anything.  Bad is not the word.  When I speak of renouncing society, of course I only mean renouncing—­the best.  There will always be some people to—­Well, you remember Dumas’ comparison of the sixpenny and the six-shilling peaches.  If you can’t have the latter, you will be able to afford the former.”

They walked on in silence to the end of the terrace, and it was not till after they had turned that the young man spoke again.

“I believe you’re overdrawing it,” he said, with some decision.

“Isn’t it you who are overdrawing what I mean?  I’m simply trying to say that while things won’t be very pleasant for you, they won’t be worse than you can easily bear—­especially when Dorothea has steeled herself to them in advance.  I repeat, too, that, poor as I am, my presence will be taken as safeguarding some of the proprieties people expect one to observe.  I speak of my presence, but, after all, you may have provided yourself with some one better.  I didn’t think of that.”

“No; there’s no one.”

“Then Dorothea is coming all alone?”

“Reggie Bradford is bringing her—­if you want to know.”

“By the ten-five train?”

“No; in his motor.”

“How very convenient these motors are!  And has she no companion but Mr. Bradford?”

“She hasn’t any companion at all.  She doesn’t even know that the man driving the machine is Reggie.  He thought that, going very slowly, as he promised to do, to avoid all chances of accident, they might arrive by eleven.”

“And Dorothea was to be alone here with you two men?”