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 For a moment she was silent; then she said: "You think—you think I have asked Mr. Tinker to give me the money for Hyacinthe?"

"I don't know about your asking. I think you may have mentioned the need for it."

"As I did to you," she said quietly. "But I did not dream of such a thing from you—nor did you."

"But from him"

"You think he has given it to me?"

"Either that, or he will," Ogle answered. "Yes, I think it extremely probable. I think that's why you're following him."

"Following!" she echoed; and she looked down on him from her fine height. "You use such words, Mr. Ogle!"

"I'm using only what words seem true to me," he said unhappily. "I've been trying to make you understand that a man can suffer more from a damaged ideal than from a damaged vanity."

"How has your 'ideal' of me been so damaged?"

"How? Why, upon my soul!" he cried. "To have thought of you as I did think of you, and then to see that you had just one sordid idea in the world! To see"

But she interrupted him fiercely. "Sordid? Is it