Page:The Finer Grain (London, Methuen & Co., 1910).djvu/93

Rh me, in respect to Miss Montravers, what I 'want'—or that I'm under any obligation to tell you. I've come to you, quite in the dark, because of Mr Traffle's letter, and so that you shouldn't have the shadow of anything to complain of. But please remember that I've neither appealed to you in any way, nor put myself in a position of responsibility toward you."

So far, but only so far, however, had he successfully proceeded before Jane was down upon him,in her new trenchant form. "It's not of your responsibility to us I'm talking, but all of your responsibility to her. We efface ourselves," she all effectively bridled, "and we're prepared for every reasonable sacrifice. But we do still a little care what becomes of the child to whom we gave up years of our life. If you care enough for her to live with her, don't you care enough to work out some way of making her your very own by the aid of such help as we're eager to render? Or are we to take from you, as against that, that even thus, with the way made easy, she's so amazingly constituted as to prefer, in the face of the world, your actual terms of intercourse?"

The young man had kept his eyes on her without flinching, and so he continued after she had spoken. He then drank down what remained of his tea, and, pushing back his chair, got up. He hadn't the least arrogance, not the least fatuity of type,—save so far as it might be offensive in such a place to show a young head modelled as with such an intention of