r wonder. "Why--naturally, what he says of
you!"

"I don't care a straw what he says of me! In such a situation a boy in
love will snatch at the most far-fetched reason rather than face the
mortifying fact that the lady may simply be tired of him."

"You don t quite understand Owen. Things go deep with him, and last
long. It took him a long time to recover from his other unlucky love
affair. He's romantic and extravagant: he can't live on the interest
of his feelings. He worships Sophy and she seemed to be fond of him. If
she's changed it's been very sudden. And if they part like this, angrily
and inarticulately, it will hurt him horribly--hurt his very soul.
But that, as you say, is between the two. What concerns me is his
associating you with their quarrel. Owen's like my own son--if you'd
seen him when I first came here you'd know why. We were like two
prisoners who talk to each other by tapping on the wall. He's never
forgotten it, nor I. Whether he breaks with Sophy, or whether they make
it up, I can't let him think you had anything to do with it."

She raised her eyes entreatingly to Darrow's, and read in them the
forbearance of the man resigned to the discussion of non-existent
problems.

"I'll do whatever you want me to," he said; "but I don't yet know what
it is."

His smile seemed to charge her with inconsequence, and the prick to her
pride made her continue: "After all, it's not so unnatural that Owen,
knowing you and Sophy to be almost strangers, should wonder what you
were saying to each other when he saw you talking together."

She felt a warning tremor as she spoke, as though some instinct deeper
than reason surged up in defense of its treasure. But Darrow's face was
unstirred save by the flit of his half-amused smile.

"Well, my dear--and couldn't you have told him?" "I?" she faltered out
through her blush.

"You seem to forget, one and all of you, the position you put me in when
I came down here: your appeal to me to see Owen through, your assurance
to him that I would, Madame de Chantelle's attempt to win me over; and
most of all, my own sense of the fact you've just recalled to me: the
importance, for both of us, that Owen should like me. It seemed to me
that the first thing to do was to get as much light as I could on the
whole situation; and the obvious way of doing it was to try to know Miss
Viner better. Of course I've talked with her alone--I've talked with her
as often as I could. I've