She felt from his eyes that he knew what she was suffering, and was even suffering with her.

“And if—­if they won’t?”

“Then I shall go on a different tack altogether, and they must look out for themselves.”

Mrs. Pendyce sank back in her chair; she seemed to smell again that smell of leather and disinfectant, and hear a sound of incessant clicking.  She felt faint, and to disguise that faintness asked at random, “What does ‘without prejudice’ in this letter mean?”

Mr. Paramor smiled.

“That’s an expression we always use,” he said.  “It means that when we give a thing away, we reserve to ourselves the right of taking it back again.”

Mrs. Pendyce, who did not understand, murmured: 

“I see.  But what have they given away?”

Paramor put his elbows on the desk, and lightly pressed his finger-tips together.

“Well,” he said, “properly speaking, in a matter like this, the other side and I are cat and dog.

“We are supposed to know nothing about each other and to want to know less, so that when we do each other a courtesy we are obliged to save our faces by saying, ‘We don’t really do you one.’  D’you understand?”

Again Mrs. Pendyce murmured: 

“I see.”

“It sounds a little provincial, but we lawyers exist by reason of provincialism.  If people were once to begin making allowances for each other, I don’t know where we should be.”

Mrs. Pendyce’s eyes fell again on those words, “Bellew v.  Bellew and Pendyce,” and again, as though fascinated by their beauty, rested there.

“But you wanted to see me about something else too, perhaps?” said Mr. Paramor.

A sudden panic came over her.

“Oh no, thank you.  I just wanted to know what had been done.  I’ve come up on purpose to see George.  You told me that I——­”

Mr. Paramor hastened to her aid.

“Yes, yes; quite right—­quite right.”

“Horace hasn’t come with me.”

“Good!”

“He and George sometimes don’t quite——­”

“Hit it off?  They’re too much alike.”

“Do you think so?   I never saw-----”

“Not in face, not in face; but they’ve both got——­”

Mr. Paramor’s meaning was lost in a smile; and Mrs. Pendyce, who did not know that the word “Pendycitis” was on the tip of his tongue, smiled vaguely too.

“George is very determined,” she said.  “Do you think—­oh, do you think, Mr. Paramor, that you will be able to persuade Captain Bellew’s solicitors——­”

Mr. Paramor threw himself back in his chair, and his hand covered what he had written on his blotting-paper.

“Yes,” he said slowly——­“oh yes, yes!”

But Mrs. Pendyce had had her answer.  She had meant to speak of her visit to Helen Bellew, but now her thought was: 

‘He won’t persuade them; I feel it.  Let me get away!’