Mr. Devant arose uneasily and walked about the room, then he came back and drew his chair close to Thornly's.
"Will you take a glass of my—wine?" he asked huskily.
Thornly was about to decline, but changed his mind.
"Thanks, I will," he said instead. And the two sipped the port together.
"Dick, this has shaken me a bit. I feel that I have an ignoble share in the whole affair. I'm getting to be an old man; I can claim certain privileges on that score, and if life means anything past forty, it means sharing its experiences with a friend. I'm going to speak of something that has never passed my lips for nearly twenty years."
"You are very kind, Mr. Devant." Thornly set his glass down and thrust his hands in his pockets. "I appreciate your friendliness, but please do not give yourself pain. If life means anything under forty, it means getting your knocks at first hand." He tried to smile pleasantly, but his face fell at once into gloomy, set lines.
"I'm afraid," Mr. Devant went on, keeping his eyes upon his companion's face and guiding himself thereby, "I'm afraid some Quixotic idea of defending this little pimpernel of ours moves you to take this step. Believe me, nothing you can do in that direction—unless indeed you have gone too far already—can avail, if you seek the girl's happiness."
A deep flush rose to Thornly's cheeks, but the proud uplift of the head renewed hope in the older man's heart.
"You say," he continued, toying with his glass, "that to drag Katharine from her world would be ruinous to her; to drag this child of the dunes from her world would be—to put it none too harshly—hell! I've looked the girl's antecedents up since that day on the Hills. I've had my bad moments, I can assure you. It's like trying to draw water out of an empty well to get anything against their own from these people down here; but I had hopes of the girl's mother. I pin my faith to ancestry, and I am willing to build on a very small foundation, providing the soil is good. But the mother in no wise accounts for the daughter. She was a simple, uneducated woman, with rather an unpleasant way of shunning her kind. James B. Smith, my gardener, permitted me to wring this from him. He doesn't fancy Captain Billy Morgan, thinks him rather a saphead. He hinted at a necessity for the marriage of this same Billy and the girl's mother. It's about the one sin the Quintonites know as a sin. They come as near going back upon each other for that transgression as they ever come to anything definite. The girl is the offspring of a stupid surf-man and a nondescript sort of woman. She is not the product of any known better stock; she is, well, a freak of nature! You cannot transplant that kind of flower, Dick. The roots are hid in shallow soil of a peculiar kind. If you planted her in, well, in even your artistic world, she would either die, shrivel up, and be finished, or she might spread her roots, and finish you! I've seen more than one such case."
Thornly shook himself, as if doubtful what he should reply to this man who, above all else, in his own fashion, was trying to prove himself a friend.