Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/137

Rh makes him do it," she said. And "Now do you think," she pursued, "that I don't tell you things?"

He turned them over in his young perception and pity, the things she told him. "Oh, oh, oh!" And then, in the great place, while as, just spent by the effort of her disclosure, she moved from him again, he took them all in. "That's the situation that, as you say, may force his hand."

"It absolutely, I feel, does force it." And the renewal of her appeal brought her round. "Isn't it too lovely?"

His frank disgust answered. "It's too damnable!"

"And it's you," she quite terribly smiled, "who—by the 'irony of fate'!—have given him help."

He smote his head in the light of it. "By the Mantovano?"

"By the possible Mantovano—as a substitute for the impossible Sir Joshua. You've made him aware of a value."

"Ah, but the value's to be fixed!"

"Then Mr. Bender will fix it!"

"Oh, but—as he himself would say—I'll fix