There was a silence, then Mr. Treffry said: 

“It isn’t fair to come here and ask what you’re asking.  You don’t know what’s in the future for you, you don’t know that you can keep a wife.  It isn’t pleasant, either, to think you can’t hold up your head in your own country.”

Harz turned white.

“Ah! you bring that up again!” he broke out.  “Seven years ago I was a boy and starving; if you had been in my place you would have done what I did.  My country is as much to me as your country is to you.  I’ve been an exile seven years, I suppose I shall always be I’ve had punishment enough; but if you think I am a rascal, I’ll go and give myself up.”  He turned on his heel.

“Stop!  I beg your pardon!  I never meant to hurt you.  It isn’t easy for me to eat my words,” Mr. Treffry said wistfully, “let that count for something.”  He held out his hand.

Harz came quickly back and took it.  Christian’s gaze was never for a moment withdrawn; she seemed trying to store up the sight of him within her.  The light darting through the half-closed shutters gave her eyes a strange, bright intensity, and shone in the folds of her white dress like the sheen of birds’ wings.

Mr. Treffry glanced uneasily about him.  “God knows I don’t want anything but her happiness,” he said.  “What is it to me if you’d murdered your mother?  It’s her I’m thinking of.”

“How can you tell what is happiness to her?  You have your own ideas of happiness—­not hers, not mine.  You can’t dare to stop us, sir!”

“Dare?” said Mr. Treffry.  “Her father gave her over to me when she was a mite of a little thing; I’ve known her all her life.  I’ve—­I’ve loved her—­and you come here with your ’dare’!” His hand dragged at his beard, and shook as though palsied.

A look of terror came into Christian’s face.

“All right, Chris!  I don’t ask for quarter, and I don’t give it!”

Harz made a gesture of despair.

“I’ve acted squarely by you, sir,” Mr. Treffry went on, “I ask the same of you.  I ask you to wait, and come like an honest man, when you can say, ‘I see my way—­here’s this and that for her.’  What makes this art you talk of different from any other call in life?  It doesn’t alter facts, or give you what other men have no right to expect.  It doesn’t put grit into you, or keep your hands clean, or prove that two and two make five.”

Harz answered bitterly: 

“You know as much of art as I know of money.  If we live a thousand years we shall never understand each other.  I am doing what I feel is best for both of us.”

Mr. Treffry took hold of the painter’s sleeve.

“I make you an offer,” he said.  “Your word not to see or write to her for a year!  Then, position or not, money or no money, if she’ll have you, I’ll make it right for you.”

“I could not take your money.”

A kind of despair seemed suddenly to seize on Mr. Nicholas Treffry.  He rose, and stood towering over them.