Meantime, Temple and I, at two hand-basins, soaped and towelled, and I was more discreet toward him than I have been to you, for I reserved from him altogether the pronunciation of the council of senators in the secret chamber of my head.  Whether, indeed, I have fairly painted the outer part of myself waxes dubious when I think of his spluttering laugh and shout; ‘Richie, you haven’t changed a bit—­you’re just like a boy!’ Certain indications of external gravity, and a sinking of the natural springs within characterized Temple’s approach to the responsible position of a British husband and father.  We talked much of Captain Welsh, and the sedate practical irony of his imprisoning one like Edbury to discipline him on high seas, as well as the singular situation of the couple of culprits under his admonishing regimen, and the tragic end.  My next two minutes alone with Janet were tempered by it.  Only my eagerness for another term of privacy persuaded her that I was her lover instead of judge, and then, having made the discovery that a single-minded gladness animated me in the hope that she and I would travel together one in body and soul, she surrendered, with her last bit of pride broken; except, it may be, a fragment of reserve traceable in the confession that came quaintly after supreme self-blame, when she said she was bound to tell me that possibly—­probably, were the trial to come over again, she should again act as she had done.

Happily for us both, my wits had been sharpened enough to know that there is more in men and women than the stuff they utter.  And blessed privilege now! if the lips were guilty of nonsense, I might stop them.  Besides, I was soon to be master upon such questions.  She admitted it, admitting with an unwonted emotional shiver, that absolute freedom could be the worst of perils.  ‘For women?’ said I. She preferred to say, ‘For girls,’ and then ‘Yes, for women, as they are educated at present.’  Spice of the princess’s conversation flavoured her speech.  The signs unfamiliar about her for me were marks of the fire she had come out of; the struggle, the torture, the determined sacrifice, through pride’s conception of duty.  She was iron once.  She had come out of the fire finest steel.

‘Riversley!  Harry,’ she murmured, and my smile, and word, and squeeze in reply, brought back a whole gleam of the fresh English morning she had been in face, and voice, and person.

Was it conceivable that we could go back to Riversley single?

Before that was answered she had to make a statement; and in doing it she blushed, because it involved Edbury’s name, and seemed to involve her attachment to him; but she paid me the compliment of speaking it frankly.  It was that she had felt herself bound in honour to pay Edbury’s debts.  Even by such slight means as her saying, ‘Riversley, Harry,’ and my kiss of her fingers when a question of money was in debate, did we burst aside the vestiges of mutual strangeness, and recognize one another, but with an added warmth of love.  When I pleaded for the marriage to be soon, she said, ‘I wish it, Harry.’