'Which do you think is in the wrong?'
'There are some things which brothers might pardon in each other, but which to other men would be unpardonable.'
'Do you think, then, that Roland Ferrier has done anything unpardonable?' She had felt intensely annoyed at the turn the conversation had taken, but since it had taken this turn, she was determined to learn as much from it as possible.
'I don't think he has done anything the world would not pardon, and we must remember that the greater part of the fault lies in his bringing up.' He said this with a delicate air of chivalrously making the best of a bad cause.
'If the world pardons the unpardonable,' said Clare, feeling that she was skating on very thin ice, and not quite knowing how to get back to the bank again, 'so much the worse for the world.'
'I knew you would say that.'
'And,' she went on, forgetting how little she had told her companion, 'if I could only be sure that all Richard said was true, I would accept no one's ruling but my own on such a question.'
Litvinoff's eyes gave one little flash at the admission contained in this speech, but he said quite quietly,—
'Well, no one can possibly know. I presume he must at least believe it.'