'Yes.' He paused an instant. 'Unless there ever came a time when you would like to be undeceived—when it might seem better to have been helped than not to have needed help. Well, Beaufort Chance upset that scheme. Here we are, face to face with the truth. We've not been that before. How we made pretence with one another!' He shook his head in half-humorous reprobation. She saw with wonder how little unhappy he was about it all, how it all seemed to him a bygone thing, a strange dream which might retain its meaning and its interest, but ceased to have living importance the moment dawning day put it to flight.
'You told me you weren't cured,' he went on. 'That you still wanted the old life, the old ambition—that my advice still appealed to you. That fatal advice of mine! It did half the mischief. Don't you see my right to pay the money in that again? Still, I tell you, I didn't pay it for you; I paid it for myself.'
'I can give you no return for it.'
'I ask none. The return I have got I've told you. I am free.' He loved the thought; again it brought a smile to his lips. 'There's no question of a return from you to me.'
'Yes, but I shall owe you everything,' she cried. 'The very means of living decently!' Her pride was in arms again as the truth came back to her.
'Then sell all you have and repay me the money,' he suggested. 'Say I'm Fricker. There'll be nobody to buy me off, as Peggy and I bought Fricker off.'
'What?' she exclaimed, startled into betraying her surprise.
'Pay it back,' he cried gaily. 'Pay it all back. I'll take it. I'm not afraid of money now. It might come rolling into Danes Inn—in barrels! Like beer-casks! And a couple of draymen hard on the rope! I shouldn't so much as turn round. I shouldn't count the barrels—I should go on counting the sparrows on the roof. I've not the least objection to be repaid.'
She fell into silence. Airey began strolling about the room again; he smoked a cigarette while she sat without speaking, with her brows knit and her hands now clenching the arms of her chair. Suddenly she broke out in a new protest.
'Oh, that's not it, that's not it! Paying the money back wouldn't cure it. As far as that goes, I could have paid Fricker myself. It's the failure. It's the failure and the shame. Nothing can cure that.'