Page:The Finer Grain (London, Methuen & Co., 1910).djvu/145

Rh she might be. In order, don't you see," she luminously reasoned, "that we shall have it on our conscience that we took the case out of his hands."

"And you allowed to him then that that's how we do have it?"

To this her face lighted as never yet. "Why, it's just the point of what I tell you—that I feel I must."

He turned it over. "But why so if you're right?"

She brought up her own shoulders for his density. "I haven't been right. I've been wrong."

He could only glare about. "In holding her then already to have fallen—?"

"Oh, dear, no, not that! In having let it work me up. Of course I can but take from him now," she elucidated, "what he insists on."

Her husband measured it. "Of course, in other words, you can but believe she was as bad as possible and yet pretend to him he has persuaded you of the contrary?"

"Exactly, love—so that it shall make us worse. As bad as he wants us," she smiled.

"In order," Traffle said after a moment, "that he may comfortably take the money?"

She welcomed this gleam. "In order that he may comfortably take it."

He could but gaze at her again. "You have arranged it!"

"Certainly I have—and that's why I'm calm. He considers, at any rate," she continued, "that it