"Yes, you told me. And I wanted you to buy it, because I thought you would do your best for me."
"I know. I know. If it wasn't for that—but that's the horrible part of it."
"Why? You did your best, did you not?"
"Yes. I really thought it would be all right if I went up and saw him. I felt certain he would see it as I did—"
"Well?"
He answered with painful hesitation. "Well—he didn't see it. My father hasn't very much imagination—he couldn't realize the thing in the same way, because he wasn't in it as I was. He'd seen nobody but Pilkington, you see."
Something in her face told him that this line of defence was distasteful to her, that he had no right to make a personal matter of an abstract question of justice. It was through those personalities that he had always erred.
"I don't see what that has to do with it," she said.
"He—he thought it was only a question of a bargain between Pilkington and him."
"What you mean is that he wouldn't admit that I came into it at all?"