Her voice had risen.  An unexpected interruption stopped the argument for the merest fraction of time.

“Aye,” said Pa.  “They’ve got their old Pa!” He had taken his pipe out of his mouth and was looking towards the combatants with an eye that for one instant seemed the eye of perfect comprehension.  It frightened Jenny as much as it disconcerted Alf.  It was to both of them, but especially to Alf, like the shock of a cold sponge laid upon a heated brow.

“I never said you hadn’t!” he sulkily said, and turned round to look amazedly at Pa.  But Pa had subsided once more, and was drinking with mournful avidity from his tankard.  Occupied with the tankard, Pa had neither eye nor thought for anything else.  Alf resumed after the baffled pause.  “Yes.  You’ve got him all right enough....”  Then:  “You’re trying to turn it off with your monkey tricks!” he said suddenly.  “But I see what it is.  I was a fool not to spot it at once.  You’ve got some other fellow in tow.  I’m not good enough for you any longer.  Got no use for me yourself; but you don’t mind turning me over to old Em....”  He shook his head.  “Well, I don’t understand it,” he concluded miserably.  “I used to think you was straight, Jen.”

“I am!” It was a desperate cry, from her heart.  Alf sighed.

“You’re not playing the game, Jen old girl,” he said, more kindly, more thoughtfully.  “That’s what’s the matter.  I don’t know what it is, or what you’re driving at; but that’s what’s wrong.  What’s the matter with me?  Anything?  I know I’m not much of a one to shout the odds about.  I don’t expect you to do that.  Never did.  But I never played you a trick like this.  What is it?  What’s the game you think you’re playing?” When she did not answer his urgent and humble appeal he went on in another tone:  “I shall find out, mind you.  It’s not going to stop here.  I shall ask Emmy.  I can trust her.”

“You can’t ask her!” Jenny cried.  It was wrung from her.  “You just dare to ask her.  If she knew you hadn’t meant to take her to-night, it ud break her heart.  It would.  There!” Her voice had now the ring of intense sincerity.  She was not afraid, not defiant.  She was a woman, defending another woman’s pride.

Alf groaned.  His cheeks became less ruddy.  He looked quickly at the door, losing confidence.

“No:  I don’t know what it is,” he said again.  “I don’t understand it.”  He sat, biting his under lip, miserably undetermined.  His grim front had disappeared.  He was, from the conquering hero, become a crestfallen young man.  He could not be passionate with Pa there.  He felt that if only she were in his arms she could not be untruthful, could not resist him at all; but with the table between them she was safe from any attack.  He was powerless.  And he could not say he loved her.  He would never be able to bring himself to say that to any woman.  A woman might ask him if he loved her, and he would awkwardly answer that of course he did; but it was not in his nature to proclaim the fact in so many words.  He had not the fluency, the dramatic sense, the imaginative power to sink and to forget his own self-consciousness.  And so Jenny had won that battle—­not gloriously, but through the sheer mischance of circumstances.  Alf was beaten, and Jenny understood it.