t
will, eventually, be the young French lady and--Paris, in future. When,
do you fancy? Soon?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. I haven't quite made up my mind as yet
which of the two it will be. And then there's the application to be sent
afterwards."

"Still, it will be one of the two certainly?"

"Oh, yes. I shall have to earn my living in future, you know; so,
naturally, of course--" She gave her shoulder an eloquent upward
movement, and let the rest go by default.

Cleek did not speak for a moment: merely walked on beside her--a ridge
between his eyebrows and his lower lip sucked in; as if he were mentally
debating upon something and was afraid he might speak incautiously. But
of a sudden:

"Miss Lorne," he said, in a curiously tense voice, "may I ask you
something? Let us say that you had set your heart upon obtaining one or
the other of these two positions--set it so entirely that life wouldn't
be worth a straw to you if you didn't get it. Let us say, too, that
there was something you had done, something in your past which, if
known, might utterly preclude the possibility of your obtaining what you
wanted--it is an absurd hypothesis, of course: but let us use it for the
sake of argument. We will say you had done your best to live down that
offensive 'something' done, and were still doing all that lay in your
power to atone for it; that nobody but one person shared the knowledge
of that 'something' with you, and upon his silence you could rely. Now
tell me: would you feel justified in accepting the position upon which
you had set your heart _without_ confessing the thing; or would you feel
in duty bound to speak, well knowing that it would in all human
probability be the end of all your hopes? I should like to have your
opinion upon that point, please."

"I can't see that I or anybody else could have other than the one," she
replied. "It is an age-old maxim, is it not, Mr. Cleek, that two wrongs
cannot by any possibility constitute a right? I should feel in duty
bound, in honour bound, to speak, of course. To do the other would be to
obtain the position by fraud--to steal it, as a thief steals things that
_he_ wants. No sort of atonement is possible, is even worth the name, if
it is backed up by deceit, Mr. Cleek."

"Even though that deceit is the only thing that could give you your
heart's desire? The only thing that could open the Gates of Heaven for
you?"

"The 'Gates of Heaven,' as you put it, can nev