I see it's the only
thing possible."

He sat looking at me as though he had forgotten what my features were
like and was, just discovering that my nose, after all, hadn't really
been put on straight. Then the old battling light grew stronger than
ever in his eyes.

"It's _not_ going to be the only thing possible," he declared. "And
I'm not going to make _you_ pay for my mistakes. Not on your life! I
could have swung the farm lands, all right, even though they did have
me with my back to the wall, if only the city stuff hadn't gone
dead--so dead that to-day you couldn't even give it away. I'm not an
embezzler. Allie sent me out that money to take a chance with, and by
taking a double chance I honestly thought I could get her double
returns. As you say, it was a gambler's chance. But the cards broke
against me. The thing that hurts is that I've probably just about
cleaned the girl out."

"How do you know that?" I asked, wondering why I was finding it so
hard to sympathize with that denuded and deluded English cousin.

"Because I know what's happened to about all of the older families and
estates over there," retorted Dinky-Dunk. "The government has pretty
well picked them clean."

"Could I see your Cousin Allie's letters?"

"What good would it do?" asked the dour man across the table from me.
"The fat's in the fire, and we've got to face the consequences."

"And that's exactly what I've been trying to tell you, you foolish old
calvanistic autocrat! We've got to face the consequences, and the only
way to do it is to do it the way I've said."

Dinky-Dunk's face softened a little, and he seemed almost ready to
smile. But he very quickly clouded up again, just as my own heart
clouded up. For I knew, notwithstanding my willingness to deny it,
that I was once more acting on impulse, very much as I'd acted on
impulse four long years ago in that residuary old horse-hansom in
Central Park when I agreed to marry Duncan Argyll McKail before I was
even in love with him. But, like most women, I was willing to let
Reason step down off the bridge and have Intuition pilot me through
the more troubled waters of a life-crisis. For I knew that I was doing
the right thing, even though it seemed absurd, even though at first
sight it seemed too prodigious a sacrifice, just as I'd done the right
thing when in the face of tribal reasoning and logic I'd gone kiting
off to a prairie-ranch and a wickiup with a leaky roof. It was a
tumble