CONFIDENCE
"And you found she was not. Is that what you mean?"
"She's as firm as a rock. My dear Gordon, Miss Vivian is as firm as the firmest of your geological formations."
Gordon shook his head with a strange positive persistence.
"You are talking nonsense. You are not serious. You are not telling me the truth. I don't believe that you attempted to make love to her. You wouldn't have played such a game as that. It wouldn't have been honourable."
Bernard flushed a little; he was irritated.
"Oh come, don't make too much of a point of that! Didn't you tell me before that it was a great opportunity?"
"An opportunity to be wise—not to be foolish!"
"Ah, there is only one sort of opportunity!" cried Bernard. "You exaggerate the reach of human wisdom."
"Suppose she had let you make love to her," said Gordon. "That would have been a beautiful result of your experiment."
"I should have seemed to you a rascal, perhaps, but I should have saved you from a latent coquette. You would owe some thanks for that."
"And now you haven't saved me," said Gordon, with a simple air of noting a fact.
"You assume in spite of what I say that she is a coquette!"
"I assume something, because you evidently conceal something. I want the whole truth."
Bernard turned back to the window with increasing irritation.
"If he wants the whole truth he shall have it," he said to himself.
107
