“I don’t want to know how it began,” Davenant said, hastily.  “I’m satisfied with knowing the situation as it is.”

“But I want to tell you.  In proportion as I’m open with you I shall expect you to be frank with me.”

“I don’t promise to be frank with you.”

“Anyhow, I mean to set you the example.”

He went on to speak rapidly, feverishly, with that half-hysterical impulse toward confession from the signs of which Davenant had shrunk on the previous evening.  As Guion himself had forewarned, there was nothing new or unusual in the tale.  The situations were entirely the conventional ones in the drama of this kind of unfaithfulness.  The only element to make it appealing, an element forcibly present to Davenant’s protective instincts, was the contrast between what Guion had been and what he was to-day.

“And so,” Guion concluded, “I don’t see how I could accept this money from you.  Any honorable man—­that is,” he corrected, in some confusion, “any sane man—­would tell you as much.”

“I’ve already considered what the sane man and the honorable man would tell me.  I guess I can let them stick to their opinion so long as I have my own.”

“And what is your opinion?  Do you mind telling me?  You understand that what you’re proposing is immoral, don’t you?”

“Yes—­in a way.”

Guion frowned.  He had hoped for some pretense at contradiction.

“I didn’t know whether you’d thought of that.”

“Oh yes, I’ve thought of it.  That is, I see what you mean.”

“It’s compounding a felony and outwitting the ends of justice and—­”

“I guess I’ll do it just the same.  It doesn’t seem to be my special job to look after the ends of justice; and as for compounding a felony—­well, it’ll be something new.”

Guion made a show of looking at him sharply.  The effort, or the pretended effort, to see through Davenant’s game disguised for the moment his sense of humiliation at this prompt acceptance of his own statement of the case.

“All the same,” he observed, trying to take a detached, judicial tone, “your offer is so amazing that I presume you wouldn’t make it unless you had some unusual reason.”

“I don’t know that I have.  In fact, I know I haven’t.”

“Well, whatever its nature, I should like to know what it is.”

“Is that necessary?”

“Doesn’t it strike you that it would be—­in order?  If I were to let you do this for me you’d be rendering me an extraordinary service.  We’re both men of business, men of the world; and we know that something for nothing is not according to Hoyle.”

Davenant looked at him pensively.  “That is, you want to know what I should be pulling off for myself?”

“That’s about it.”

“I don’t see why that should worry you.  If you get the money—­”

“If I get the money I put myself in your power.”