“Thank heaven!” said Durham again.

She looked at him singularly.  “Yes—­you may thank heaven.  Why isn’t it enough to satisfy Fanny?”

“Why isn’t what enough?”

“Your being, as I say, a new element; taking her so completely into a better air.  Why shouldn’t she be content to begin a new life with you, without wanting to keep the boy too?”

Durham stared at her dumbly.  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said at length.

“I mean that in her place—­” she broke off, dropping her eyes.  “She may have another son—­the son of the man she adores.”

Durham rose from his seat and took a quick turn through the room.  She sat motionless, following his steps through her lowered lashes, which she raised again slowly as he stood before her.

“Your idea, then, is that I should tell her nothing?” he said.

“Tell her now? But, my poor friend, you would be ruined!”

“Exactly.”  He paused.  “Then why have you told me?”

Under her dark skin he saw the faint colour stealing.  “We see things so differently—­but can’t you conceive that, after all that has passed, I felt it a kind of loyalty not to leave you in ignorance?”

“And you feel no such loyalty to her?”

“Ah, I leave her to you,” she murmured, looking down again.

Durham continued to stand before her, grappling slowly with his perplexity, which loomed larger and darker as it closed in on him.

“You don’t leave her to me; you take her from me at a stroke!  I suppose,” he added painfully, “I ought to thank you for doing it before it’s too late.”

She stared.  “I take her from you?  I simply prevent your going to her unprepared.  Knowing Fanny as I do, it seemed to me necessary that you should find a way in advance—­a way of tiding over the first moment.  That, of course, is what we had planned that you shouldn’t have.  We meant to let you marry, and then—.  Oh, there is no question about the result:  we are certain of our case—­our measures have been taken de loin.”  She broke off, as if oppressed by his stricken silence.  “You will think me stupid, but my warning you of this is the only return I know how to make for your generosity.  I could not bear to have you say afterward that I had deceived you twice.”

“Twice?” He looked at her perplexedly, and her colour rose.

“I deceived you once—­that night at your cousin’s, when I tried to get you to bribe me.  Even then we meant to consent to the divorce—­it was decided the first day that I saw you.”  He was silent, and she added, with one of her mocking gestures:  “You see from what a milieu you are taking her!”

Durham groaned.  “She will never give up her son!”

“How can she help it?  After you are married there will be no choice.”

“No—­but there is one now.”

“_ Now?_” She sprang to her feet, clasping her hands in dismay.  “Haven’t I made it clear to you?  Haven’t I shown you your course?” She paused, and then brought out with emphasis:  “I love Fanny, and I am ready to trust her happiness to you.”