"If they love each other," said Richard Hartley, "I expect the other things don't count. Do they?"
Baron de Vries rose to his feet, for he saw that the Phidias lady was going.
"Perhaps not," said he; "I hope not. In any case, do your best for him with Helen. Make her comprehend if you can. I am afraid she is unhappy over the affair."
He made his adieus, and went away with the American lady, to that young person's obvious excitement. And after a moment the three ladies across the room departed also, Mrs. Benham explaining that she was taking her two friends up to her own sitting-room, to show them something vaguely related to the heathen. So Hartley was left alone with Helen Benham.
It was not his way to beat about the bush, and he gave battle at once. He said, standing, to say it more easily:
"You know why I came here to-day? It was the first chance I've had since that--unfortunate evening. I came on Ste. Marie's account."
Miss Benham said a weak "Oh!" And because she was nervous and overwrought, and because the thing meant so much to her, she said, cheaply: "He owes me no apologies. He has a perfect right to act as he pleases, you know."
The Englishman frowned across at her. "I didn't come to make apologies," said he. "I came to explain. Well, I have explained--Baron de Vries and I together. That's just how it happened. And that's just how Ste. Marie takes things. The point is that you've got to understand it. I've got to make you."
The girl smiled up at him dolefully. "You look," she said, "as if you were going to beat me if necessary. You look very warlike."
"I feel warlike," the man said, nodding. He said: "I'm fighting for a friend to whom you are doing, in your mind, an injustice. I know him better than you do, and I tell you you're doing him a grave injustice. You're failing altogether to understand him."