e, that settlement counts for
nothing, except to make him punishable for perjury now. The money is
yours whenever you apply for it. That--"

"Oh--but I shall not apply for it. I don't want it, you see."

"It is not a question of whether you want it or not. It is yours--in
just the way that the furniture in this room is yours. You simply have
no right to evade it."

Through all the agitation she felt in the sudden dragging out of this
long-buried subject, his air of dictatorial authority brought the blood
to her cheek.

"I have a right to evade it, in the first place, and in the second, I am
not evading it at all. He took it; I let him keep it. That is the whole
situation. I don't want it--I couldn't touch it--"

"Well, don't decide that now. There would be no harm, I suppose, in your
talking with your mother about it--even with some man in whose judgment
you have confidence. You will feel differently when you have had time to
think it over. Probably it--"

"Thinking it over will make not the slightest difference in the way I
feel--"

"Perhaps it would if you stopped thinking about it from a purely selfish
point of view. Other--"

"_What_?"

"I say," he repeated dryly, "that you should stop thinking of the matter
from a purely selfish point of view. Don't you know that that is what
you are doing? You are thinking only whether or not you, personally,
desire this money. Well, other people have an interest in the question
besides you. There is your mother, for example. Why not consider it from
her standpoint? Why not consider it from--well, from the standpoint of
Mr. Surface?"

"Of Mr. Surface?"

"Certainly. Suppose that in his old age he has become penitent, and
wants to do what he can to right the old wrong. Would you refuse him
absolution by declining to accept your own money?"

"I think it will be time enough to decide that when Mr. Surface asks me
for absolution."

"Undoubtedly. I have particularly asked, you remember, that you do not
make up your mind to anything now."

"But you," said she, looking at him steadily enough now--"I don't
understand how you happen to be here apparently both as my counselor and
Mr. Surface's agent."

"I have a right to both capacities, I assure you."

"Or--have you a habit of being--?"

She left her sentence unended, and he finished it for her in a colorless
voice.

"Of being on two sides of a fence, perhaps you were about to say?"

She made no reply.

"That is