“Did he use the word—­charity?”

“Almost.  He said you offered him a loan, but that it really was a gift.”

His first impulse was to repudiate this point of view, but a minute’s reflection decided him in favor of plain speaking.  “Well,” he said, slowly, “suppose it was a gift.  Would there be any harm in it?”

“There wouldn’t be any harm, perhaps; there would only be an—­impossibility.”  She worked very busily, and spoke in a low voice, without looking up.  “A gift implies two conditions—­on the one side the right to offer, and on the other the freedom to take.”

“But I should say that those conditions existed—­between Mr. Guion and me.”

“But not between you and me.  Don’t you see?  That’s the point.  To any such transaction as this I have to be, in many ways, the most important party.”

Again he was tempted to reject this interpretation; but, once more, on second thought, he allowed it to go uncontested.  When he spoke it was to pass to another order of question.

“I wonder how much you know?”

“About my father’s affairs?  I know everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yes; everything.  He told me yesterday.  I didn’t expect him to come home last night at all; but he came—­and told me what you had proposed.”

“You understood, then,” Davenant stammered, “that he might have to—­to—­go away?”

“Oh, perfectly.”

“And aren’t you very much appalled?”

The question was wrung from him by sheer astonishment.  That she should sit calmly embroidering a sofa-cushion, with this knowledge in her heart, with this possibility hanging over her, seemed to him to pass the limits of the human.  He knew there were heroic women; but he had not supposed that with all their heroism they carried themselves with such sang-froid.  Before replying she took time to search in her work-basket for another skein of silk.

“Appalled is scarcely the word.  Of course, it was a blow to me; but I hope I know how to take a blow without flinching.”

“Oh, but one like this—­”

“We’re able to bear it.  What makes you think we can’t?  If we didn’t try, we should probably involve ourselves in worse.”

“But how could there be worse?”

“That’s what I don’t know.  You see, when my father told me of your kind offer, he didn’t tell me what you wanted.”

“Did he say I wanted anything?”

“He said you hadn’t asked for anything.  That’s what leaves us so much in the dark.”

“Isn’t it conceivable—­” he began, with a slightly puzzled air.

“Not that it matters,” she interrupted, hurriedly.  “Of course, if we had anything with which to compensate you—­anything adequate, that is—­I don’t say that we shouldn’t consider seriously the suggestion you were good enough to make.  But we haven’t.  As I understand it, we haven’t anything at all.  That settles the question definitely.  I hope you see.”