 he inquired, watching her.

'Yes, she was.'

'Then her distress, and even anger, are natural enough. We won't discuss the girl's history; probably I know all that I need to. But whatever her misdoing, you certainly didn't wish to drive her to suicide.'

Rhoda deigned no reply.

'All the same,' he continued in his gentlest tone, 'it turns out that you have practically done so. If Mary had taken the girl back that despair would most likely never have come upon her. Isn't it natural that Mary should repent of having been guided by you, and perhaps say rather severe things?'

'Natural, no doubt. But it is just as natural for me to resent blame where I have done nothing blameworthy.'

'You are absolutely sure that this is the case?'

'I thought you expressed a conviction that I was in the right?'

There was no smile, but Everard believed that he detected its possibility on the closed lips.

'I have got into the way of always thinking so—in questions of this kind. But perhaps you tend to err on the side of severity. Perhaps you make too little allowance for human weakness.'

'Human weakness is a plea that has been much abused, and generally in an interested spirit.'

This was something like a personal rebuke. Whether she so meant it, Barfoot could not determine. He hoped she did, for the more personal their talk became the better he would be pleased.

'I, for one,' he said, 'very seldom urge that plea, whether in my own defence or another's. But it answers to a spirit we can't altogether dispense with. Don't you feel ever so little regret that your severe logic prevailed?'

'Not the slightest regret.'

Everard thought this answer magnificent. He had anticipated some evasion. However inappropriately, he was constrained to smile.

'How I admire your consistency! We others are poor halting creatures in comparison.'

'Mr. Barfoot,' said Rhoda suddenly, 'I have had enough of this. If your approval is sincere, I don't ask for it. If you are practising your powers of irony, I had rather you chose some other person. I will go my way, if you please.'

She just bent her head, and left him.

Enough for the present. Having raised his hat and turned on his heels, Barfoot strolled away in a mood of peculiar satisfaction.
