She adjusted her furs hurriedly. "All right, Thor. I'll come. I only want to say one thing more—"
"No, no; please!"
"I will say it," she insisted, as he led her from the room, "because it'll do Ena good. It's just this," she threw back over her shoulder, "that I forgive you, Ena. You're so magnificent that I can't nurse a grudge against you. When a woman has done what you've done she may be punished by her own conscience—but not by me. I'm lost in admiration for the scale on which she carries out her crimes."
By the time they were in the porch, with the door closed behind them, Bessie's excitement subsided suddenly. Her voice became plaintive and childlike again, as she said, wistfully:
"Oh, Thor, do you think it's all gone?—that we sha'n't get any of it back? I know we haven't spent it. We can't have spent it."
Since Thor was Thor, there was only one thing for him to say. He needed no time to reflect or form resolutions. Whatever the cost to him, in whatever way, he could say nothing else. "You'll get it all back, Mrs. Willoughby. Don't worry about it any more. Just leave it to me."
But Bessie was not convinced. "I don't see how that's going to be. If your father says the money is gone, it is gone—whether we've spent it or not. Trust him!" Nevertheless, she kissed him, saying: "But I don't blame you, Thor. If there were two like you in the world it would be too good a place to live in, and Len and Lois think the same."
He got her into the motor and closed the door upon her. Standing on the door-step, he watched it crawl down the avenue, like a great black beetle on the snow. As it passed the gateway his father appeared, coming on foot from the electric car.