then crossed the room and brought up before her
book-shelves, staring blindly at the titles. He hadn't looked at her
even as he crossed the room.

"Oh, it's a presumptuous thing to try to say," he broke out at last, "a
pitifully unnecessary thing to say, because you must know it without my
telling you. But when you went away you said--you said it was because
you hadn't--my--friendship! You said that was the thing you wanted and
that you were going to try to earn it. And in Dubuque you told me that
I'd evidently never be able to understand that you could have been happy
in that room on Clark Street, that I'd wanted to 'rescue' you from; that
I'd never be able to see that the thing you were doing there was a fine
thing, worth doing, entitled to my respect. Well, the things I'd been
saying to you and the things I'd been doing, justified you in thinking
that. But what I've come down here to say is--is that now--at last--I do
see it."

She would have spoken then if she could have commanded her voice, and as
it was, the sound she made conveyed her intention to him, for he turned
on her quickly as if to interrupt the unspoken words, and went on with
an almost savage bitterness.

"Oh, I'm under no illusions about it. I had my chance to see, when
seeing would have meant something to you--helped you. When any one but
the blindest sort of fool would have seen. I didn't. Now, when the thing
is patent for the world to see--now that Violet Williamson has seen it
and Constance, and God knows who of the rest of them, who were so
tactful and sympathetic about my 'disgrace'--now that you've won your
fight without any help from me ... Without any help! In spite of every
hindrance that my idiocy could put in your way! Now, after all--I come
and tell you that you've earned the thing you've set out to get."

There was a little silence after that. She got up and took the post he
had abandoned at the window.

"Why did you do it, Roddy?" she asked. "I mean, why did you want to come
and tell me?"

"Why, in the first place," he said, "I wanted to get back a little of my
self-respect. I couldn't get that until I'd told you."

This time the silence was longer.

"What else did you want?" she asked. "What--in the second place?"

"I don't know why I put it like that," he said. "Please don't think ...
I can't bear to have you think that I came down here to--ask anything of
you--anything in the way of a reward for having seen what is so plain