“Miss Pennycuick,” he continued, as she kept silence, “I want to get the hang of this thing.  Will you tell me straight—­yes or no—­have you been giving it out that I left Redford two years ago engaged to you?”

Her first impulse was to cry out:  “Oh, no, no!  Not quite so bad as that!” But on second thoughts she said: 

“Yes—­practically.”

Sudden rage seemed to seize him.  He sat up, he crossed his knees, he uncrossed them, he twisted this way and that, he muttered “Good God!” as if the pious ejaculation had referred to the Other Person, and his stare at her was cruel.

“But—­but—­I have been racking my brains to remember anything—­ surely I never gave you—­I am perfectly convinced, I have the best reason for being absolutely certain, that I could not have given you—­ "

“Never!” she broke in.  “Of course not.  It was all my own invention.”

“You admit it?  Thank you.  You formally relieve me of the imputation I have so long lain under without knowing it, of having run away from my duty?”

She said lifelessly:  “We thought you were dead.”

“Hah!  I see.  You thought it didn’t matter what you said of a dead man?  But dead men’s characters should be all the more sacred because they cannot defend them.  I should be sorry indeed to leave behind me such a reputation as I seem to have hereabouts—­though, indeed, a man is very helpless in these cases.  He is at a hopeless disadvantage when a woman is his traducer.  I can see that Jim Urquhart will never be a friend of mine again, whatever happens.”

“He shall know the truth.  Everybody shall know the truth,” said Mary.

“How can everybody know the truth?  Only by my own affidavit, and that would not be believed.  Besides, it is not for me to deny—­at the cost of branding a lady a liar.”

It was the straight word, regardless of manners, with this sea-bred man.

“You need not.  I know how to do it so that people will believe.  I am going to write a letter to the newspaper—­a plain statement, that will fully exonerate you.”

He nearly jumped out of his chair with the fright she gave him.

“You will do nothing so ridiculous!” he exclaimed angrily.

“It is the only way,” said she—­“the only way to make sure.”

“If you do,” he menaced her, “I shall simply write another for the next issue to flatly contradict you.”

“Then you would be a liar.”

“That doesn’t matter in the least.  I must be a man first.  I am not going to let you ruin yourself.”

“Ah, that is done already!  Nothing can make it worse—­for me.”

He looked at her, taking in the words, in some sort understanding them.  She lifted her eyes to look at him, and what he saw behind the look went to his kindly heart.  He “felt” for her for the first time.

“May I go now?” she whispered.

His answer was to move to a seat beside her.