“I understood,” she said.

“Well, then ...”  But he didn’t at once go on.  Stood there a while longer at the window, then crossed the room and brought up before her book-shelves, staring blindly at the titles.  He hadn’t looked at her even as he crossed the room.

“Oh, it’s a presumptuous thing to try to say,” he broke out at last, “a pitifully unnecessary thing to say, because you must know it without my telling you.  But when you went away you said—­you said it was because you hadn’t—­my—­friendship!  You said that was the thing you wanted and that you were going to try to earn it.  And in Dubuque you told me that I’d evidently never be able to understand that you could have been happy in that room on Clark Street, that I’d wanted to ‘rescue’ you from; that I’d never be able to see that the thing you were doing there was a fine thing, worth doing, entitled to my respect.  Well, the things I’d been saying to you and the things I’d been doing, justified you in thinking that.  But what I’ve come down here to say is—­is that now—­at last—­I do see it.”

She would have spoken then if she could have commanded her voice, and as it was, the sound she made conveyed her intention to him, for he turned on her quickly as if to interrupt the unspoken words, and went on with an almost savage bitterness.

“Oh, I’m under no illusions about it.  I had my chance to see, when seeing would have meant something to you—­helped you.  When any one but the blindest sort of fool would have seen.  I didn’t.  Now, when the thing is patent for the world to see—­now that Violet Williamson has seen it and Constance, and God knows who of the rest of them, who were so tactful and sympathetic about my ’disgrace’—­now that you’ve won your fight without any help from me ...  Without any help!  In spite of every hindrance that my idiocy could put in your way!  Now, after all—­I come and tell you that you’ve earned the thing you’ve set out to get.”

There was a little silence after that.  She got up and took the post he had abandoned at the window.

“Why did you do it, Roddy?” she asked.  “I mean, why did you want to come and tell me?”

“Why, in the first place,” he said, “I wanted to get back a little of my self-respect.  I couldn’t get that until I’d told you.”

This time the silence was longer.

“What else did you want?” she asked.  “What—­in the second place?”

“I don’t know why I put it like that,” he said.  “Please don’t think ...  I can’t bear to have you think that I came down here to—­ask anything of you—­anything in the way of a reward for having seen what is so plain to every one.  I haven’t any—­claim at all.  I want to earn your friendship.  It’s the biggest thing I’ve got to hope for.  But I’ve no idea that you can hand it out to me ready-made.  I believe you’d do it if you could.  But you said once, yourself, that it wasn’t a thing that could be given.  It was a thing that had to be earned.  And you were right about that, as you were about so many other things.  Well, I’m going to try to earn it.”  “Is that—­all you want?” she asked, and then hearing the little gasp he gave, she swung round quickly and looked at him.  It was pretty dark in the room, but his face in the dusk seemed to have whitened.