eel an interloper. And----" He paused a
moment. "Yes, I'm glad," he ended.

"No, no, you mustn't be glad," she cried quickly. "Because it's
unendurable, unendurable!"

"To you? It's not to me. I thought it might be. It isn't."

"Yes, to me, to me! Oh, end it for me, Harry, end it for me!"

She was imploring, she was the suppliant. The reversal of parts, strange
in itself, hardly seemed strange to Harry Tristram. And it made him
quite his old self again. He felt that he had something to give. But her
next words shattered that delusion.

"You must take it back. Let me give it back to you," she prayed.

He was silent a full minute before he answered slowly and coldly:

"From anybody else I should treat that as an insult; with you I'm
willing to think it merely ignorance. In either case the absurdity's the
same." He turned away from her with a look of distaste, almost of
disgust. "How in the world could you do it?" he added by way of climax.

"I could do it. In one way I could." She rose as he turned back to her.
"I want you to have Blent. You're the proper master of Blent. Do you
think I want to have it by accident?"

"You have it by law, not by accident," he answered curtly. He was
growing angry. "Why do you come here and unsettle me?" he demanded. "I
wasn't thinking of it. And then you come here!"

She was apologetic no longer. She faced him boldly.

"You ought to think of it," she insisted. "And, yes, I've come here
because it was right for me to come, because I couldn't respect myself
unless I came. I want you to take back Blent."

"What infernal nonsense!" he exclaimed. "You know it's impossible."

"No," she said; she was calm but her breath came quick. "There's one way
in which it's possible."

In an instant he understood her; there was no need of more words. She
knew herself to be understood as she looked at him; and for a while she
looked steadily. But his gaze too was long, and it became very
searching, so that presently, in spite of her efforts, she felt herself
flushing red, and her eyes fell. The room had become uncomfortably quiet
too. At last he spoke.

"I suppose you remember what I told you about Janie Iver," he said, "and
that's how you came to think I might do this. You must see that that was
different. I gave as much as I got there. She was rich, I was----" He
smiled sourly. "I was Tristram of Blent. You are Tristram of Blent, I
am----" He shrugged his shoulders.

He made no reference