"I'll stand between you."
"But you can't," she said. "You've no right."
"There's but one thing for you to do," said Reardon. "Tell what you're telling me to a lawyer. And I'll—" he hesitated. He hardly knew how to put it so that her sense of fitness should not be offended. "I'll find the money," he ended lamely.
The small hands stayed willingly in his. Reardon was a happy man, but at the same time he was curiously ashamed. He was a clean man who ate moderately and slept well and had the proper amount of exercise, and this excess of emotion jarred him in a way that irritated him. He did blame Jeff, who was at the bottom of this beautiful creature's misery. Still, if Jeff had not left her, she would not be sitting here now with the white hands in his. But he was conscious of a disturbing element of the unlawful, like eating a hurtful dish at dinner. Reardon had lived too long in a cultivating of the middle way to embark with joyousness on illicit possessing. As the traditions of Addington were wafting Alston Choate away from this primitive little Circe on her isle, so his acquired habits of safe and healthful living were wafting him. If his inner refusals could have been spoken crudely out they would have amounted to a miserable plea:
"Look here. It ain't because I don't want you. But there's Jeff."
For Reardon was not only a good fellow, but he had gazed with a wistful awe on the traditions of Addington's upper class. He had tried honestly to look like the men born to it; he never owned even to himself that he felt ill at ease in it. Yet he did regard it with a reverence the men that made it were far from feeling, and he knew something was due it. He drew back, releasing gently the white hands that lay in his. He wanted to kiss them, but he was not even yet sure they were enough his to justify it. He cleared his throat.
"The man for you to go to," said he, "is Alston Choate. I don't like him, but he's square as a die. And if you can get yourself where it'll be possible to speak to you without knowing there's another man stepping between—" he hesitated, his own heart beating for her and the decencies of Addington holding him back. "Hang it, Esther," he burst forth, "you know where I stand."
"Do I?" said Esther.
She rose, and, looking wan, gave him her hand. And Reardon got out of the room, feeling rather more of a sneak than Alston had when he went away. Esther stood still until she heard the door close behind him. Then she ran out of the room and upstairs, to hide herself, if she could, from the exasperated thought of the men who had failed her. She hated them all. They owed her something, protection, or cherishing tenderness. She could not know it was Addington that had got hold of them in one way or another and kept them doggedly faithful to its own ideals. As she was stepping along the hall, Madame Beattie called her.
"Esther, stop a minute. I want you."