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."
"I wonder," the girl said, looking very thoughtfully down at the table before her.