"Please don't put it that way. If there be any fault, it is mine. You have left nothing undone."
The man of expedients ran over his cards reflectively and decided that the moment for playing his long suit was fully come.
"Your goodness of heart excuses me where I am to blame," he qualified. "I am coming to believe that I have defeated my own cause."
"By being too good to me?" she suggested.
"No; by running where I should have been content to walk; by shackling you with a promise, and so in a certain sense becoming your jailer. That is putting it rather clumsily, but isn't it true?"
"I had never thought of it in that light," she said unresponsively.
"You wouldn't, naturally. But the fact remains. It has wrenched your point of view hopelessly aside, don't you think? I have seen it and felt it all along, but I haven't had the courage of my convictions."
"In what way?" she asked.
"In the only way the thing can be stood squarely upon its feet. It's hard—desperately hard; and hardest of all for a man of my peculiar build. I am no longer what you would call a young man, Elinor, and I have never learned to turn back and begin all over again with any show of heartiness. They used to say of me in the Yacht Club that if I gained a half-length in a race, I'd hold it if it took the sticks out of my boat."
"I know," she assented absently.