“Perfectly.  I think I know what has happened.  I can guess.”

“Then, I’ll be hanged if I can.  What is it?”

“I’ll let them tell you that themselves.  I’m too tired to say anything more to-night.”

She kept close to the office where the clerk was shutting books and locking drawers preparatory to closing.

“You must let me come and thank you—­” he began.

“You must thank Miss Marion Grimston,” she interrupted, “for any real service.  All I’ve done for you, as you see, has been to bring you on an unnecessary journey.”

“For me it has been a journey—­into truth.”

“I’ll say good-night now.  I shall not see you in the morning.  You’ll not forget to be very gentle with Dorothea, will you—­and with him?  Good-night again—­good-night.”

Smiling into his eyes, she ignored the hand he held out to her and slipped away into the semi-darkness as the impatient clerk began turning out the lights.

XXII

Derek Pruyn was guilty of an injustice to the Marquis de Bienville in supposing he would make the incident at Lakefield a topic of conversation among his friends.  His sense of honor alone would have kept him from betraying what might be looked upon as an involuntary confidence, even if it had not better suited his purposes to intrust the matter, in the form of an amusing anecdote, told under the seal of secrecy, to Mrs. Bayford.  In her hands it was like invested capital, adding to itself, while he did nothing at all.  Months of insinuation on his part would have failed to achieve the result that she brought about in a few days’ time, with no more effort than a rose makes in shedding perfume.

Before Derek had been able to recover from the feeling of having passed through a strange waking dream, before Dorothea and he had resumed the ordinary tenor of their life together, before he had seen Diane again, he was given to understand that the little scene on Bienville’s arrival at the Bay Tree Inn was familiar matter in the offices, banks, and clubs he most frequented.  The intelligence was conveyed by a score of trivial signs, suggestive, satirical, or over-familiar, which he would not have perceived in days gone by, but to which he had grown sensitive.  It was clear that the story gained piquancy from its contrast with the staidness of his life; and his most intimate friends permitted themselves a little covert “chaff” with him on the event.  He was not of a nature to resent this raillery on his own account; it was serious to him only because it touched Diane.

For her the matter was so grave that he exhausted his ingenuity in devising means for her protection.  He refrained from even seeing her until he could go with some ultimatum before which she should be obliged to yield.  An unsuccessful appeal to her, he judged, would be worse than none at all; and until he discovered arguments which she could not controvert he decided to hold his peace.