"True; but there's a good deal that _is_ in our hands. There's, for example--our own."

"Up to a point--yes."

"And up to that point we should take care of it. Shouldn't we?"

"I dare say. But I don't know what you mean."

He gave the nervous little laugh which helped him over moments of embarra.s.sment.

"Ford was with me last night. He said it was all off between him and Evie."

"I thought he might tell you that."

"So that," he went on, forcing a smile, with which his voice and manner were not in accord, "our undertaking having failed, the bottom's out of everything. Don't you see?"

She was so astonished that she walked into his trap, just as he expected.

"I don't see in the least. I thought our undertaking--as you call it--was going to be particularly successful."

"Successful--how?"

He dropped his smile and looked interrogative, his bit of acting still keeping her off her guard.

"Why, if Amalia Gramm's testimony is all you think it's going to be----"

"Oh, I see. That's the way you look at it."

"Isn't it the way you look at it, too?"

He smiled again, indulgently, but with significance.

"No; I confess it isn't--at least, it hasn't been. I thought--perhaps I was wrong--that our interest was in getting Ford off, so that he could marry Evie. Since he isn't going to marry her, why--naturally--we don't care so much--whether he gets off or not."

"Oh, but----"

She checked herself; she even grew a little pale. She began to see dimly whither he was leading her.

"Of course I don't say we should chuck him over," he went on; "but it isn't the same thing any longer, is it? I think it only fair to point that out to you, because it gives you reasonable ground for reconsidering your--decision."

"Oh, but I don't want to."

While she had said exactly what he hoped to hear, she had not said it as he hoped to hear it. There were shades of tone even to impetuosity, and this one lacked the note his ear was listening for. None the less, he told himself, a wise man would have stopped right there; and he was conscious of his folly in persisting, while he still persisted.

"That's for you to decide, of course. Only if we go on, it must be understood that we've somewhat shifted our ground."

"I haven't shifted mine."

"Not as you understand it yourself--as, possibly, you've understood it all along. But you have, as I see things. When you came to me--to my office----"

She put up her hand as though she would have screened her face, but controlled herself to listen quietly.

"Your object, then," Conquest continued, cruelly, "was to get Ford off, so that he might marry Evie. Now, I understand it to be simply--to get him off."

She looked at him with eyes full of distress or protest. It was a minute or two before she spoke.

"I don't see the necessity for such close definition."

"I do. I want you to know exactly what you're doing. I want you to see that you're paying a higher price than you need pay--for the services rendered."

He had got her now just where he had been trying to put her. He had snared her, or given her an opportunity, according as she chose to take it. She could have availed herself of the latter by a look or a simple intonation, for the craving of his heart was such that his perceptions were acute for the slightest hint. Had she known that, it would have been easy for her to respond to him, playing her part with the loyalty with which she had begun it. As it was, his cold manner and his slightly mocking tone betrayed her.

Her answer was meant to give him the kind of a.s.surance she thought he was looking for; and she couched it in the language she supposed he would most easily understand. In the things it said and did not say her very sincerity was what stabbed him.

"I hope it won't be necessary to bring this subject up again. I know what I undertook, and I'm anxious to fulfil it. I should be very much hurt if I wasn't allowed to, just because you had scruples about taking me at my word. You've been so--so splendid--in doing your part that I should feel humiliated if I didn't do mine."

There was earnestness in her regard and a suggestion of haughtiness in the tilt of her head. The Wise Man within him bade him be content, and this time he listened to the voice. He did her the justice to remember, too, that she was offering him all he had ever asked of her; and if he was dissatisfied, it was because he had increased his demands without telling her.

It was by a transition of topic that he saw he could nail her to her purpose.

"By-the-way," he said, when they had got on neutral ground again, and were speaking of Wayne, "I wish you would come and see what I think of doing for him. There are two rooms back of my library--too dark for my use--but that wouldn't matter to him, poor fellow--"

He saw that she was nerving herself not to flinch at this confrontation with the practical. He saw too that her courage and her self-command would have deceived any one but him. The very pluck with which she nodded her comprehension of his idea, and her sympathy with it, enraged him to a point at which, so it seemed to him, he could have struck her. Had she cried off from her bargain he could have borne it far more easily. That would at least have given him a sense of superiority, and helped him to be magnanimous; while this readiness to pay put him in the wrong, and drove him to exact the uttermost farthing of his rights. On a weak woman he might have taken pity; but this strong creature, who refused to sue to him by so much as the quiver of an eyelid, and rejected his concessions before he had time to put them forth, exasperated every nerve that had been wont to tingle to his sense of power. Since she had asked no quarter, why should he give it?--above all, when to give quarter was against his principles.

"And perhaps," he pursued, in an even voice, showing no sign of the tempest within, "that would be as good a time as any for you to look over the entire house. If there are any changes you would like to have made----"

"I don't think there will be."

"All the same, I should like you to see. A man's house, however well arranged, isn't always right for a woman's occupancy; and so----"

"Very well; I'll come."

"When?"

"I'll come to-morrow."

"About four?"

"Yes; about four. That would suit me perfectly."

She spoke frankly, and even smiled faintly, with just such a shadow of a blush as the situation called for. The Wise Man within him begged him once more to be content. If, the Wise Man argued, this well-poised serenity was not love, it was something so like it that the distinction would require a splitting of hairs. Conquest strove to listen and obey; but even as he did so he was aware again of that rage of impotence which finds its easiest outlet in violence. As he rose to take his leave, with all the outward signs of friendly ceremoniousness, he had time to be appalled at the perception that he, the middle-aged, spick-and-span New-Yorker, should so fully understand how it is that a certain type of frenzied brute can kill the woman whom he pa.s.sionately loves, but who is hopelessly out of reach.

XXIV

Except when his business instincts were on the alert, Ford's slowness of perception was perhaps most apparent in his judgment of character and his a.n.a.lysis of other people's motives. Taking men and women as he found them, he had little tendency to speculate as to the impulses within their lives, any more than as to the furnishings behind their house-fronts. A human being was all exterior to him, something like a street. Even in matters that touched him closely, the act alone was his concern; and he dealt with its consequences, without, as a rule, much inquisitive probing of its cause.