“Ah!” said Montague.

He had expected it, but somehow her method of conveying the news—though he realized it to be characteristic—took him by surprise. Perhaps, remembering that he had held her in her weakness a few hours before while she had wept against his arm, he had hoped for greater intimacy in the telling. As it was, he found himself actually hesitating as to how to receive it.

She certainly did not ask for sympathy, this woman of the curt speech and tired eyes. Rather she repudiated the bare notion. Yet was he conscious of a keen desire to offer it.

He stood in silence for a moment or two, bracing himself for a distinct effort.

“Does it mean very much to you?” he asked at length.

Her short laugh grated upon him. It had the sound of a wrong chord. She had smiled at him that morning, and he had felt her charm. Her laughter should have been sheer music.

Her voice had the same hard quality as she answered him. “No more than it does to most people when they lose their livelihood, I should say.”

But, strangely, her words gave him courage to pass the barrier. He spoke as one worker to another.

“What damnable luck!” he said.

Perhaps they were the most sincere words he had yet spoken, and they pierced her armour. He saw her chin quiver suddenly. She turned her face from him.

“I shall worry through,” she said, and her voice was brisk and business-like, wholly free from emotion. “I’m not afraid of that.”

But she was afraid, and he knew it. And something within him leapt to the knowledge. He knew that he had found the weak joint.

“Oh, there’s always a way out,” he said. “I’ve been in some tight corners myself, and I’ve proved that every time.” He broke off, with his eyes upon the rippling pathway of moonlight that stretched to their feet. Then, abruptly as she herself had spoken: “Is the Bishop going to do anything to make things easier?” he asked.

She made a small choking sound and produced a laugh. “Good heavens!” she said. “Do you really imagine I would let him if he would?”

“Why not?” said Montague boldly. “You’ve worked hard for him. If he has any sense of what is fitting, he will regard it in the light of a debt.”

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