He threw the coat over his shoulders, seating himself on the floor, with his feet on the steps below him and his back to one of the fluted Corinthian pilasters.  The shadow was so deep on this side of the house—­the side remote from the approaching moonrise—­that they could see each other but dimly.  Of the two she was the more visible, not only because she was in white, but because of the light coming through the open sitting-room behind her from the hail in the middle of the house.  In this faint glimmer he could see the pose of her figure in the deep wicker arm-chair and the set of her neat head with its heavy coil of hair.

“I asked you to come,” she said, simply, “because I feel so helpless.”

“That’s a very good reason,” he responded, guardedly.  “I’m glad you thought of me, rather than of any one else.”

He was pleased to note that even to his own ears his accent was polite, but no more.  At the same minute he found the useful formula he had been in search of—­“I mustn’t let her know I’m in love with her.”

“There’s no one else for me to think of,” she explained, in self-excuse.  “If there were, I shouldn’t bother you.”

“That’s not so kind,” he said, keeping to the tone of conventional gallantry.

“I don’t mean that I haven’t plenty of friends.  I know lots of people—­naturally; but I don’t know them in a way to appeal to them like this.”

“Then so much the better for me.”

“That’s not a reason for my imposing on your kindness; and yet I’m afraid I must go on doing it.  I feel like a person in such desperate straits for ready money that he’s reckless of the rate of interest.  Not that it’s a question of money now—­exactly.”

“It doesn’t matter what it’s a case of.  I’m at your service, Miss Guion—­”

“I know.  That’s why I asked you to come.  I want you to keep Colonel Ashley from doing what he proposed this afternoon.”

She spoke more abruptly, more nervously, than was her habit.

“I would if I could; but I don’t know that I’ve any way of dissuading him.”

“You needn’t dissuade him.  You’ve simply to refuse to take his money.”

“It’s not quite so easy as that, because there’s no direct business between him and me.  If Mr. Guion wanted to pay me what I’ve lent him, I couldn’t decline to accept it.  Do you see?”

In the dim light he noticed her head nodding slowly.  “Oh, so that’s the way it is?  It would have to be done through papa?”

“It would have to be done through him.  And if he preferred to use Colonel Ashley’s money rather than mine, I should have nothing at all to say.”

“I see; I see,” she commented, thoughtfully.  “And I don’t know how papa would feel about it, or how far I could count on him.”

For a few minutes Davenant said nothing.  When he spoke it was with some amazement at his own temerity.  “I thought you didn’t want my help, if you could possibly get any other?”