The only thing his own manner met was the obstinacy. "I'll get it from him!"
She repeated her headshake, but with a world of sadness added, "Get it if you can!"
He looked into her eyes now as if it was the sadness that struck him most. "He won't say, because he did you?"
They showed each other, on this, the least separated faces yet. "He'll never, never say."
The confidence in it was so tender that it sounded almost like pity, and the young man took it up with all the flush of the sense that pity could be but for him. This sense broke full in her face. "The scoundrel!"
"Not a bit!" she returned, with equal passion—"I was only too clever for him!" The thought of it was again an exaltation in which she pushed her friend aside. "So let me go!"
The push was like a jar that made the vessel overflow, and he was before her now as if he stretched across the hall. "With the heroic view of your power and the barren beauty of your sacrifice? You pour out money, you move a mountain, and to let you 'go,' to close the door fast behind you, is all I can figure out to do for you?" His emotion trembled out of him with the stammer of a new language, but
