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“You would,” said Eve.

“Well, I couldn’t take money like that.”

“Plenty of people do.”

“Yes, but ...”

Eve leaned forward.

“She wanted you to have it, Jeremy. She was rich, and it gave her pleasure to spend her money like that. Your conscience was clear.”

Jeremy shifted in his chair.

“It wouldn’t ’ve been,” he said, “if I’d frozen on to it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t deserve it.”

“Wasn’t that a matter for her?”

The man hesitated. Then—

“I just couldn’t take it,” he said.

“Because it was a tip?”

“Oh, no. If it had been a fiver—well, I suppose I’d been attentive and I’ve no false pride.”

“Then why,” said Eve, “why did you turn it down?”

Jeremy laughed.

“I’m damned if I know,” he said. “But it couldn’t be done.”

Eve lay back in her chair and crossed her legs.

“Shall I tell you?” she said. “Because you’re a gentleman. You thought she’d lost her head—she probably had: and you weren’t going to take advantage of a runaway heart.... That hundred pounds was Cæsar’s: you rendered it whence it came.”