It was one of those moments which occur from time to time when a man of honor must speak first and reflect afterward—­just as at the heights of Dargal he had had to risk his life for Private Vickerson’s, without debating as to which of them, in the general economy of lives, could the more easily be spared.

“It would make the difference—­”

He stopped again.  It was a great deal to say.  Once he had said it there could be no reconsideration.  Reconsideration would be worse than not saying it at all, on the principle that not to stand by one’s guns might be a greater cowardice than not to mount them.  Fear, destruction, and the pit might come upon him; the service, the country, Heneage, home, honors, ambitions, promotions, high posts of command, all might be swept into the abyss, and yet one imperative duty would survive the wreck, the duty to be Rupert Ashley at his finest.  The eyes of England were on him.  There was always that conviction, that incentive.  Let his heroism be never so secret, sooner or later those eyes would find him out.

He was silent so long that she asked, not impatiently:  “It would make what difference, Rupert?”

It was clear that she had no idea as to what was passing in his mind.  There had been an instant—­just an instant—­no more—­when he had almost doubted her, when her strategy in putting him where he was had seemed too deft to be the result of chance.  But, with her pure face turned upward and her honest eyes on his, that suspicion couldn’t last.

“It would make the difference—­”

If he paused again, it was only because his throat swelled with a choking sensation that made it difficult to speak; he felt, too, that his face was congested.  Nevertheless the space, which was not longer than a few seconds by the clock, gave him time to remember that as his mother’s and his sisters’ incomes were inalienable he was by so much the more free.  He was by so much the more free to do the mad, romantic, quixotic thing, which might seem to be a contradiction of his past, but was not so much a contradiction of himself as people who knew him imperfectly might suppose.  He was taken to be ambitious, calculating, shrewd; when all the while he knew himself to be—­as most Englishmen are at heart—­quixotic, romantic, and even a little mad, when madness can be sublime.

He was able at last to get his sentence out.

“It would make the difference that ... before we are married ... or after ... probably after ...  I should have to square him.”

“Square him?” She echoed the words as though she had no idea what they meant.

“I’m worth ...  I must be worth ... a hundred thousand pounds ... perhaps more.”

“Oh, you mean, square him in that way.”

“I must be a man of honor before everything, by Jove!”

“You couldn’t be anything else.  You don’t need to go to extremes like that to prove it.”