"Suppose I did. What difference to you would that make?" He shifted uncomfortably under her scrutiny.
"Suppose that Mr. Hilliard had called on me for some great sacrifice before he gave up that money. Would you allow it to affect you?"
"Of course," he answered. Then, unable to sit still under her searching gaze, he arose with flushed face, to meet further discomfiture as she continued:
"Even if it meant your own ruin, the loss of the fortune you have raised among your friends—money that is entrusted to you—and—and the relinquishment of Miss Wayland? Honestly, now"—her voice had softened and dropped to a lower key—"would it make any difference?"
"Certainly!"
"How much difference?"
"I'm in a very embarrassing position," he said, slowly. "You must realize that with others depending on me I'm not free to follow my own inclinations."
She uttered a little, mocking laugh. "Pardon me. It was not a fair question, and I shouldn't have asked it; but your hesitation was sufficient answer." Then, as he broke into a heated denial, she went on:
"Like most men, you think a woman has but one asset upon which to trade. However, if I felt responsible for your difficulties, that was my affair; and if I determined to help extricate you, that also concerned me alone." He stepped forward as if to protest, but she silenced his speech with an imperious little stamp of her foot. "This spasm of righteousness on your part is only temporary—yes it is"—as he attempted to break in—"and now that you have voiced it and freed your mind, you can feel at rest. Have you not repeatedly asserted that to win Miss Wayland you would use any means that offered? You are not really sincere in this sudden squeamishness, and I would like you better if you had seized your advantage at once, without stopping to consider whence or how it came. That would have been primitive—elemental—and every woman loves an elemental lover."
He was no subtle casuist, and found himself without words to reply. The girl's sharp challenging of his motives had disconcerted him without helping him to a clearer understanding of his own mind, and in spite of the cheering turn his fortunes had taken it was in no very amiable mood that he left her at last, no whit the wiser for all his questioning. In the hotel lobby below he encountered the newspaper reporter who had fallen under Fraser's spell upon their first arrival from the North. The man greeted him eagerly.