“Isn’t it conceivable,” he persisted, “that a man might like to do a thing, once in a way, without—­”

“Without asking for an equivalent in return?  Possibly.  But in this case it would only make it harder for me.”

“How so?”

“By putting me under an overwhelming obligation to a total stranger—­an obligation that I couldn’t bear, while still less could I do away with it.”

“I don’t see,” he reasoned, “that you’d be under a greater obligation to me in that case than you are to others already.”

“At present,” she corrected, “we’re not under an obligation to any one.  My father and I are contending with circumstances; we’re not asking favors of individuals.  I know we owe money—­a great deal of money—­to a good many people—­”

“Who are total strangers, just like me.”

“Not total strangers just like you—­but total strangers whom I don’t know, and don’t know anything about, and who become impersonal from their very numbers.”

“But you know Mrs. Rodman and Mrs. Clay.  They’re not impersonal.”

All he saw for the instant was that she arrested her needle half-way through the stitch.  She sat perfectly still, her head bent, her fingers rigid, as she might have sat in trying to catch some sudden, distant sound.  It was only in thinking it over afterward that he realized what she must have lived through in the seconds before she spoke.

“Does my father owe money to them?”

The hint of dismay was so faint that it might have eluded any ear but one rendered sharp by suspicion.  Davenant felt the blood rushing to his temples and a singing in his head.  “My God, she didn’t know!” he cried, inwardly.  The urgency of retrieving his mistake kept him calm and cool, prompting him to reply with assumed indifference.

“I really can’t say anything about it.  I suppose they would be among the creditors—­as a matter of course.”

For the first time she let her clear, grave eyes rest fully on him.  They were quiet eyes, with exquisitely finished lids and lashes.  In his imagination their depth of what seemed like devotional reverie contributed more than anything else to her air of separation and remoteness.

“Isn’t it very serious—­when there’s anything wrong with estates?”

He answered readily, still forcing a tone of careless matter-of-fact.

“Of course it’s serious.  Everything is serious in business.  Your father’s affairs are just where they can be settled—­now.  But if we put it off any longer it might not be so easy.  Men often have to take charge of one another’s affairs—­and straighten them out—­and advance one another money—­and all that—­in business.”

She looked away from him again, absently.  She appeared not to be listening.  There was something in her manner that advised him of the uselessness of saying anything more in that vein.  After a while she folded her work, smoothing it carefully across her knee.  The only sign she gave of being unusually moved was in rising from her chair and going to the open window, where she stood with her back to him, apparently watching the dartings from point to point of a sharp-eyed gray squirrel.