The word produced its effect.  Davenant looked from Ashley to Olivia while he echoed it.  “Temporary?”

Ashley nodded again.  “You have no objection, I presume, to that?”

“If Mr. Guion is ever in a position to pay me back,” Davenant said, slowly, in some bewilderment, “of course I’ll take it.”

“Quite so; and I think I may say that with a little time—­let us say a year—­we shall be able to meet—­”

“It’s a good bit of money,” Davenant warned him.

“I know that; but if you’ll give us a little leeway—­as I know you will—­”

“He means,” Olivia spoke up, “that he’ll sell his property—­and whatever else he has—­and pay you.”

“I don’t want that,” Davenant said, hastily.

“But I do.  It’s a point of honor with me not to let another man shoulder—­”

“And it’s a point of honor with me, Rupert—­”

“To stand by me,” he broke in, quickly.

“I can’t see it that way.  What you propose is entirely against my judgment.  It’s fantastic; it’s unreal.  I want you to understand that if you attempted to carry it out I shouldn’t marry you.  Whatever the consequences either to you or to me—­I shouldn’t marry you.”

“And if I didn’t attempt it?  Would you marry me then?”

She looked up, then down, then at Davenant, then away from him.  Finally she fixed her gaze on Ashley.

“Yes,” she said at last.  “If you’ll promise to let this wild project drop, I’ll marry you whenever you like.  I’ll waive all the other difficulties—­”

Davenant came forward, his hand outstretched.  “I think I must say good-by now, Miss Guion—­”

“No; wait,” Ashley commanded.  “This matter concerns you, by Jove!”

Olivia sprang to her feet.  “No; it doesn’t, Rupert,” she said, hastily.

“No; it doesn’t,” Davenant repeated after her.  “It’s not my affair.  I decline to be brought into it.  I think I must say good-by now, Miss Guion—­”

“Listen, will you!” Ashley said, impatiently.  “I’m not going to say anything either of you need be afraid of.  I’m only asking you to do me the justice of trying to see things from my point of view.  You may think it forced or artificial or anything you please; but unfortunately, as an officer and a gentleman, I’ve got to take it.  The position you’d put me in would be this—­of playing a game—­and a jolly important game at that—­in which the loser loses to me on purpose.”

Ashley found much satisfaction in this way of putting it.  Without exposing him to the necessity of giving details, it made clear his perception of what was going on.  Moreover, it secured him le beau role, which for a few minutes he feared he might have compromised.  In the look he caught, as it flashed between Olivia and Davenant, he saw the signs of that appreciation he found it so hard to do without—­the appreciation of Rupert Ashley as the chivalrous Christian gentleman, at once punctilious and daring, who would count all things as loss in order to achieve the highest type of manhood.  If in the back of his mind he had the conviction, hardly venturing to make itself a thought, “In the long run it pays,” it was but little to his discredit, since he could scarcely have descended from a line of shrewd, far-sighted Anglo-Saxon forefathers without making some such computation.