Davenant shot out of his seat. He, too, was not without a current of hot blood.
"All right, sir. It's for you to decide. Only, I'm sorry. Good-by!" He held out his hand, which Guion, who was now leaning forward, toying with the pens and pencils on the desk, affected not to see. A certain lack of ease that often came over Davenant at moments of leave-taking or greeting kept him on the spot. "I hoped," he stammered, "that I might have been of some use to you, and that Miss Guion—"
Guion looked up sharply. "Has she got anything to do with it?"
"Nothing," Davenant said, quickly, "nothing whatever."
"I didn't see how she could have—" Guion was going on, when Davenant interrupted.
"She has nothing to do with it whatever," he repeated. "I was only going to say that I hoped she might have got through her wedding without hearing anything about—all this—all this fuss."
In uttering the last words he had moved toward the door. His hand was on the knob and he was about to make some repetition of his farewells when Guion spoke again. He was leaning once more over the desk, his fingers playing nervously with the pens and pencils. He made no further effort to keep up his rôle of keen-sighted man of business. His head was bent, so that Davenant could scarcely see his face, and when he spoke his words were muffled and sullen.
"Half a million would be too much. Four hundred and fifty thousand would cover everything."
"That would be all the same to me," Davenant said, in a matter-of-fact tone.
But he went back to the desk and took his seat again.