‘There I may help,’ said Dartrey, relieved at sight of a loophole, to spring to some initiative out of the paralysis cast on him by a pretty little woman’s rending of her veil.  A man of honour alone with a woman who has tossed concealment to the winds, is a riddled target indeed:  he is tempted to the peril of cajoleing, that he may escape from the torment and the ridicule; he is tempted to sigh for the gallant spirit of his naughty adolescence.  ’Come to me—­will you?—­apply to me, if there’s ever any need.  I happen to have money.  And forgive me for naming it.’

She groaned:  ’Don’t!  I’m, sure, and I thought it from the first, you’re one of the good men, and the woman who meets you is lucky, and wretched, and so she ought to be!  Only to you should I! . . . do believe that!  I won’t speak of what excuses I’ve got.  You’ve seen.’

’Don’t think of them:  there’ll be danger in it.

‘Shall you think of me in danger?’

’Silly, silly!  Don’t you see you have to do with a flint!  I’ve gone through fire.  And if I were in love with you, I should start you off to your husband this blessed day.’

‘And you’re not the slightest wee wee bit in love with me!’

’Perfectly true; but I like you; and if we’re to be hand in hand, in the time to come, you must walk firm at present.’

‘I’m to go to-day?’

‘You are.’

‘Without again.’

The riddled target kicked.  Dartrey contrasted Jacob Blathenoy with the fair wife, and commiseratingly exonerated her; he lashed at himself for continuing to be in this absurdest of postures, and not absolutely secure for all that.  His head shook.  ‘Friends, you’ll find best.’

‘Well!’ she sighed, ’I feel I’m doomed to go famished through life.  There’s never to be such a thing as, love, for me!  I can’t tell you no woman could:  though you’ll say I’ve told enough.  I shall burn with shame when I think of it.  I could go on my knees to have your arms round me once.  I could kill myself for saying it!—­I should feel that I had one moment of real life.—­I know I ought to admire you.  They say a woman hates if she’s refused.  I can’t:  I wish I were able to.  I could have helped the Radnors better by staying here and threatening never to go to him unless he swore not to do them injury.  He’s revengeful.  Just as you like.  You say “Go,” and I go.  There.  I may kiss your hand?’

‘Give me yours.’

Dartrey kissed the hand.  She kissed the mark of his lips.  He got himself away, by promising to see her to the train for Paris.  Outside her door, he was met by the reflection, coming as a thing external, that he might veraciously and successfully have pleaded a passionate hunger for breakfast:  nay, that he would have done so, if he had been downright in earnest.  For she had the prettiness to cast a spell; a certain curve at the lips, a fluttering droop of the eyelids, a corner of the eye, that led