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Jeremy caught her to him and held her close.

“My eloquent darling,” he said, with his cheek against hers. “But you’ve forgotten my sex. A man——”

“You’d ’ve married me if I’d been poor?”

“You know I would.”

“It was because I was rich that you wouldn’t speak?”

“Yes.”

“It was the child you wanted to play with—not her toys?”

“Yes.”

“Why, then your honour is clean. And it’ll always be clean—so long as you’d play with the child if she had no toys.... You wouldn’t want me to throw my toys away—I’ve always had them to play with. Yet how d’you think I feel when the child I’ve picked to be my playfellow won’t share my pretty toys?”

“I wonder,” said Jeremy slowly, “I wonder whether you’re right. ‘Unto Cæsar.’ You mean I’ve been paying conscience-money—which I never owed?”

Eve nodded.

The man put her gently aside and began to pace the room.

Slight fingers to mouth, Eve watched him, as one watches the flow of a crisis which one is powerless to treat. Her face was calm, and she stood like statuary: only the rise and fall of her breast betrayed her hammering heart. Her brain was straining frantically to perceive the line she would have to take. She had moved him—shaken him plainly. Everything in the world was depending on how she handled the next thing Jeremy said....