'I could drive a hard-and-fast bargain with you; but I think I won't. If love and ambition both urge you on, perhaps——' She looked up a little defiantly, seeming to expect to meet triumph in his face. Instead, her eye took in the profound hopelessness of the bent head, the slackness of the big frame, that so suddenly had assumed a look of age. She went over to him silently, and stood by his side. 'After all,' she said, 'life hasn't been quite fair to you.' At the new thing in her voice he raised his heavy eyes. 'You fall out of one ardent woman's dreams into another's,' she said.
'Then you don't—after all, you don't mean to——'
'To keep you and her apart? No.'
For the first time tears came into his eyes.
After a little silence he held out his hand. 'What can I do for you?'
She seemed not to see the hand he offered. Or did she only see that it was empty? She was looking at the other. Mere instinct made him close his left hand more firmly on the message.
It was as if something finer than her slim fingers, the woman's invisible antennæ, felt the force that would need be overcome if trial of strength should be precipitated then. Upon his 'What can I do?' she shook her head.
'For the real you,' he said. 'Not the Reformer, or the would-be politician—for the woman I so unwillingly hurt.' As she only turned away, he stood up, detaining her with a hold upon her arm. 'You may not believe it, but now that I understand, there is almost nothing I wouldn't do to right that old wrong.'
'There's nothing to be done,' she said; and then, shrinking under that look of almost cheerful benevolence, 'You can never give me back my child.'