"You mean that you—" she began.
"Yes, it's exactly that, Ethel. I—I bought 'em all to—well, to boom the sales and to—make a name for myself in the world," he said sheepishly, "or rather for you—but I suppose now that you know—-"
"Then all this tremendous sale was arranged between you and your publishers to deceive me?" she asked.
"Not at all," protested the unhappy Van Buren. "On the contrary, I did it all myself. Hutchins & Waterbury don't know any more about it than you did an hour ago. No one knows—except you and I."
Van Buren paused.
"I could not let you marry me without knowing what I had done," he said. "It would not be fair to—to our future."
"Tell me all about it," she said quietly, and Van Buren made his confession complete. He told her of his interview with Waterbury—how the latter had told him his book had fallen flat; how it was "up to him" to do something; how a sight of a single copy of "The City of Credit" in the Tremont Street shop window had tempted him first into a retail fall which had grown ultimately into a wholesale "crime"—as he put it. He did not spare himself in the least degree, humiliating as the narration of his story was to him.
"I suppose it is all up with me now," he said ruefully, when he had finished.
"I don't know," said Ethel quietly. "I don't know, Harry. Perhaps. Take me home, please. I want to show you something."
The drive back to the Tooker mansion was taken in silence. Van Buren despised himself too strongly to be able to speak, and Miss Tooker had fallen into a deep reverie which the poor fellow at her side feared meant irrevocable ruin to his hopes.