“Mr. Canby,” she said politely, indicating a chair, “won’t you sit down?”

“Er—­thanks,” I said.  My throat was dry.  I hoped she would not make it too difficult for me.  Meanwhile I saw her eyeing me narrowly as though the possibility had just occurred to her that I might have come to ask for money.  She waited a moment for me to speak, but I found it difficult to begin.

“Mr. Benham sent you to me?” she asked at last very coolly.

“Er—­not exactly,” I stammered.  “Mr. Benham did not send me, but I—­I’m here in his interest.”

“Yes?”

The rising inflection on the monosyllable could hardly have been called encouraging.

“The circumstance of our first meeting,” I ventured again with an assumption of ease that I was far from feeling—­“its duration was so brief that I feared you wouldn’t remember me.”

Her neck stiffened ever so slightly.

“You surely did not come here,” she said icily, “merely to discuss the circumstances of our first meeting.”

“N—­no, not at all, at least, not altogether, Miss Habberton.  But I—­I couldn’t help hoping—­” here I tried to smile—­a ghastly one at best—­“I couldn’t help hoping that you had managed to forgive me for performing a very unpleasant duty.”

“If you will please come as quickly as possible to the object of your visit—­”

“I—­I will.  If you’ll be a little patient with me.”

She averted her head, but said nothing.

“I think you know, Miss Habberton, that I’ve given the last eleven years of my life to Jerry.  He has been like a younger brother to me and I have done what I could to develop him physically, mentally, morally, to successful manhood.  I had hoped under ideal conditions to produce—­”

“I fail to see, Mr. Canby—­”

“Please bear with me a moment longer.  I think you may have realized last year what Jerry was.  You saw him then, a creature with the body and intelligence of a man and the heart of a child.  He was what I had made him.  From my point of view he was flawless, as nearly perfect as you will find a man in this—­”

“Without temptations,” she put in quickly, the first encouraging sign of her interest.

“I had built my hopes as I had built his body and mind and character, sure that contact with the world would only refine and strengthen him.”

She shook her head.  “You do not know the world as I do.  It was a dream.  I could have told you so then, last summer.”

“You—­you have seen the papers—­the accounts of—?”

“I don’t see how I could very well help seeing them,” she said smiling.  “He began his battle with the world bravely at least.”

“My only hope is that you haven’t misjudged him in that affair.  All his life he has cared for boxing—­”

“I can’t see what difference my judgment of him can make one way or the other.  He has done much, is doing much for the people I’m interested in.  Of course, you know of that.  But as to his private life—­that is something with which, of course, I can have no concern.”