"You spared me a little of that distaste, at our first meeting," he said, and there was the glint of a queer smile beneath his moustache. "Have I lived that down?"
"I know now that you are a gentleman," she said simply. "I realize, too, that Landon is—is monstrous, wickedness incarnate, beyond the reach of human feeling, completely vile. I think," she hesitated, "I think he must have concentrated within himself every evil influence that has fallen upon his family, to leave you—" again she faltered, as if she struggled with a compelling power, not as if a word or phrase escaped her—"to leave you—stainless," she sighed with an inflection that seemed to tell of something reluctant in the effort.
For a moment he was silent. Then the color flamed to his face; the light of incredulity woke in his eyes.
"Then I start now with every handicap cleared away?" he asked quickly. "You see me—as other men?"
She turned and looked at him. She smiled a little wearily.
"No," she said quietly. "Not as other men."
He drew a deep breath.
"Claire," he said very quietly, "a month ago I came first into your life. Fate brought me to you, to earn, and then to resent, your unexplained hatred. When I understood it, I swore to myself that I would make you—just. That, then, is a task accomplished."
Was this sudden intimate use of her Christian name unconscious or was it premeditated? She made no comment; she only bowed her assent.
"That was no personal decision," went on Aylmer. "I did it as a duty—to all who bore my name. The personal factor came afterwards, but so soon afterwards that I can scarcely tell you when the one merged in the other. I loved you; did you understand that?"