Silence.  But it was only for a moment.  Then Harriet raised her eyes.

“He loves me,” she reminded the man, quietly.  “I don’t know what a boy’s love is worth; he’s only twenty-two, after all.  But he does love me!  But believe me, Royal, you couldn’t hurt me—­as you are hurting me!-if there was no truth in what you say.  Ward has had three years at college—­I’ve not been a member of the family all that time without knowing that he is not a saint!  He has lived as other men do—­as women permit decent men to live, I suppose.  Nina’s different.  She’s younger.  She has never had an affair—–­”

“We were not discussing Nina!”

“No, I know it.  But you reminded me that what I object to in you, with her, I myself am doing with him—­or something very like it!  Except that—­” Harriet floundered a little, but regained her thread—­“except that he does care for me,” she repeated; “he loves beauty—­I can say that to you without your misunderstanding!—­and then, he knows me, we have been intimate for years, we are congenial!”

“He knows everything about you,” Royal repeated, innocently, as if the defence she made were perfectly acceptable.  But again she was stung to silence.

“I am going to tell him frankly, exactly what you have said to me,” Harriet said, presently, with decision and relief in her voice.  “I shall remind him that I have always been poor, and that it is utterly impossible for me to separate the thought of him from the thought of what my life as his wife would gain.”

“Be careful how you play your hand alone!” the man said.  “Half confidence isn’t much more than none at all!”

A moment later they parted:  the woman entering the house for a cup of coffee, and some conference with butler and housekeeper, and the man starting off briskly for his early walk.  But Blondin was smiling, as he went upon his way, and Harriet was white with anger and impotence.

“I’ll put everything else I have in this world in the balance, Roy!” she said to herself, in the sunshiny silence of the breakfast room.  “But I’ll hold no more stolen conversations with you!  I’ll break my engagement with Ward, I’ll go to Richard Carter and humiliate myself, I’ll go back to Linda’s house without a penny in the world—­but I’ll be done with you!  Thank God, however the story may sound, especially with your interpretations on it, you haven’t my honour in your keeping, though you may seem to have!”

The house was absolutely quiet; the clock on the stairs struck a silvery seven.  Harriet went noiselessly to her own room; Nina was sleeping heavily.  She flung off her clothes, sank into bed.  And now at last sleep came, deep, delicious, satisfying.  Nina awoke, had her breakfast in bed, tubbed and dressed, and still Harriet slept on.