"

"Do you wish me to regard you as what people call an honest man, Mr.
Hume? Aren't you telling me that to put money in your own pocket you
would do what people call a dishonourable act?"

"You are the only woman I have ever met who has any claim to brains,"
he answered, paying the compliment in his blunt, rough fashion. "Don't
you know me well enough to realise that I don't ask people to set my
standards for me? Don't you know a man, when you see him, big enough
to set his own standards?"

She came to see that the man was not without a rough hewn sort of
greatness, that in his way as he had said, he was a big man. He bred
in her strange, dual emotions. In the beginning she had felt for him
only the cold hatred of which the woman was thoroughly capable;
gradually and begrudgingly she began to feel an equally cold admiration
for the strength of the man. She told herself that that admiration was
utterly impersonal, that it arose from the fact that Hume was in
reality stronger than other men she knew, that it was possible for her
to acknowledge it because she did have brains, as he had said. It was
an admiration which, she judged coolly, need in no way lessen her
hatred for him, which rather would intensify it.

Throughout the winter she strove with single purpose to slip into the
man's confidence. Having recognised Hume's peculiar strength, having
sought his weaknesses, knowing that he was no man's or woman's fool,
she did not make a fool of herself by giving him an inkling of her
intentions. When she was most interested it was her role to appear
most indifferent; here was the one vulnerable point her searching
fingers had found in the shell of his egoism. Indifference piqued him.

It was as though she had gathered three armies and hurled them at him.
From the centre she attacked with indifference, striving to draw his
attention from other points. She massed two distinct flanking
movements stealthily. Upon one side she brought to bear upon a keen
brain a brain as keen; upon the other she calmly deployed the charm of
her regal beauty. The man had seemed a machine, emotionless. But
since he was human, since blood, Hume blood though it was, ran through
his veins, he must have emotions like other men. They might be hidden,
they might be of stunted, pale growth. In one case she would uncover
them, in another she would develop. Already she admired him as a
vital, compelling force. She would make him admi