"Glad of it! Oh, if you knew how it makes me feel about myself! But you don't, or you'd never be here now."
"Why shouldn't I be here now?" He spoke slowly, as though he were himself searching for any sound reason.
"Oh, it's——" The power of explanation failed her. People who will not see obvious things sometimes hold a very strong position. Janie began to feel rather helpless. "Do go. I don't want anybody to come and find you here." She had turned from command to entreaty.
"I'm jolly glad," he resumed, settling himself back in his chair, "that the business between you and Harry Tristram's all over. It ought never to have gone so far, you know."
"Are you out of your mind to-day, Bob?"
"And now, what about the Major, Miss Janie?"
She flushed red in indignation, perhaps in guilt too. "How dare you? You've no business to——"
"I don't know the right way to say things, I dare
say," he admitted, but with an abominable tranquillity. "Still I expect you know what I mean all the same."
"Do you accuse me of having encouraged Major Duplay?"