"You mean I am to stand aside, efface myself, and let you chip in before me?" His colloquial speech accorded badly with his formal tone. "I quite see your point of view; and no doubt you think yourself justified in your demand; but still——"
"I do think I'm justified, yes," broke in Cheniston coolly. "After all, if one man has a precious stone, a diamond, let us say, and another man manages to lose it, well in the unlikely event of the two of them discovering another stone, which of them has the best right to the new one?"
"That's a pretty ingenious simile," said Anstice slowly. "But it's a false premise all the same. The diamond would naturally have no voice in the matter of its ownership. But the woman in the case might reasonably be expected to have the power of choice."
"But that's just what I'm anxious to avoid." So much in earnest was the speaker that he did not realize the fatuity of his words till they were out of his mouth. Then he uttered an impatient exclamation.
"Oh, hang it all, don't let's stand here arguing. You see the point, that's enough. I honestly feel that since it was through you that I lost Hilda Ryder"—even though he was prepared to woo another woman his voice softened over the name—"it will be doubly hard if you are to come between me and the only other girl I've ever put in Miss Ryder's place."
"I see the point, as I said before," returned Anstice deliberately. "But what I don't see is the justice of it. You've admitted I was not to blame in doing what I did that day; yet in the same breath in which you acquit me of the crime you expect me to pay the penalty!"
For a second this logical argument took Cheniston aback. Then, for his heart was set on winning Iris Wayne, he condescended to plead.
"Yes. I admit all that—and I can see I haven't a leg to stand on. But—morally—or in a spiritual sense so to speak, don't you think yourself that I have just the shadow of a right to ask you to stand aside?"
"Yes." His assent was unflinching, though his lips were white. "You have that right, and that's why I'm listening to you to-night. But—don't you think we are both taking a wrong view of the matter? What faintest grounds have we for supposing Miss Wayne will listen to either of us?"
"Oh, that's not an insurmountable obstacle." Cheniston saw the victory was won, and in an instant he was awake to the expediency of clinching the matter finally. "We don't know, of course, that she will listen either to me or to you. But for my part I am ready to take my chance. And"—at the last moment the inherent honesty of the man came to the surface through all the unscrupulous bargain he was driving—"my chance is a hundred times better if you withdraw from the contest."