“It’s relief,” he said, nodding with understanding toward the room up-stairs.  “I’ve seen men do that before—­after they’d been facing some danger or other with tremendous pluck.”

He spoke for the sake of saying something, standing before her with his hat and stick in his hand, not seeing precisely how he was to get away.

“It’s a relief to me, too,” she said, simply.  “You can’t imagine what it’s been the last few days—­seeing things go to pieces like that.  Now, I suppose, they’ll hold together somehow, though it can’t be very well.  I dare say you think me all wrong—­”

He shook his head.

“I couldn’t see any other way.  When you’ve done wrong as we’ve done it, you’d rather be punished.  You don’t want to go scot-free.  It’s something like the kind of impulse that made the hermits and ascetics submit to scourging.  But it’s quite possible that I shouldn’t have had the courage to go through with it—­especially if papa had broken down.  As you said from the first, I didn’t see what was truly vital.”

“I shouldn’t blame myself too much for that, Miss Guion.  It often happens that one only finds the right way by making two or three plunges into wrong ones.”

“Do you think I’ve found it now?”

There was something wistful in the question, and not a little humble, that induced him to say with fervor, “I’m very sure of it.”

“And you?” she asked.  “Is it the right way for you?”

“Yes; and it’s the first time I’ve ever struck it.”

She shook her head slowly.  “I don’t know.  I’m a little bewildered.  This morning everything seemed so clear, and now—­I understand,” she went on, “that we shall be taking all you have.”

“Who told you that?” he asked, sharply.

“It doesn’t matter who told me; but it’s very important if we are. Are we?”

He threw his head back in a way that, notwithstanding her preoccupation, she could not but admire.  “No; because I’ve still got my credit.  When a man has that—­”

“But you’ll have to begin all over again, sha’n’t you?”

“Only as a man who has won one battle begins all over again when he fights another.  It’s nothing but fun when you’re fond of war.”

“Didn’t I do something very rude to you—­once—­a long time ago?”

The question took him so entirely unawares that, in the slight, involuntary movement he made, he seemed to himself to stagger backward.  He was aware of looking blank, while unable to control his features to a non-committal expression.  He had the feeling that minutes had gone by before he was able to say: 

“It was really of no consequence—­”

“Don’t say that.  It was of great consequence.  Any one can see that—­now.  I was insolent.  I knew I had been.  You must have been perfectly aware of it all these years; and—­I will say it!—­I must say it!—­you’re taking your revenge—­very nobly.”