not
saying it at all, on the principle that not to stand by one's guns might
be a greater cowardice than not to mount them. Fear, destruction, and
the pit might come upon him; the service, the country, Heneage, home,
honors, ambitions, promotions, high posts of command, all might be swept
into the abyss, and yet one imperative duty would survive the wreck, the
duty to be Rupert Ashley at his finest. The eyes of England were on him.
There was always that conviction, that incentive. Let his heroism be
never so secret, sooner or later those eyes would find him out.

He was silent so long that she asked, not impatiently: "It would make
what difference, Rupert?"

It was clear that she had no idea as to what was passing in his mind.
There had been an instant--just an instant--no more--when he had almost
doubted her, when her strategy in putting him where he was had seemed
too deft to be the result of chance. But, with her pure face turned
upward and her honest eyes on his, that suspicion couldn't last.

"It would make the difference--"

If he paused again, it was only because his throat swelled with a
choking sensation that made it difficult to speak; he felt, too, that
his face was congested. Nevertheless the space, which was not longer
than a few seconds by the clock, gave him time to remember that as his
mother's and his sisters' incomes were inalienable he was by so much
the more free. He was by so much the more free to do the mad, romantic,
quixotic thing, which might seem to be a contradiction of his past, but
was not so much a contradiction of _himself_ as people who knew him
imperfectly might suppose. He was taken to be ambitious, calculating,
shrewd; when all the while he knew himself to be--as most Englishmen are
at heart--quixotic, romantic, and even a little mad, when madness can be
sublime.

He was able at last to get his sentence out.

"It would make the difference that ... before we are married ... or
after ... probably after ... I should have to square him."

"Square him?" She echoed the words as though she had no idea what they
meant.

"I'm worth ... I _must_ be worth ... a hundred thousand pounds ...
perhaps more."

"Oh, you mean, square him in that way."

"I must be a man of honor before everything, by Jove!"

"You couldn't be anything else. You don't need to go to extremes like
that to prove it."

Her lack of emotion, of glad enthusiasm, chilled him. She even ceased to
look at him, turning