Nearer than that Miriam could not approach the subject through fear of doing more harm than good. At the end of a week Ford found her at home, chiefly because she felt it time he should. She secured again the afternoon-call atmosphere; but she noticed that he carried a small packet--a large, brownish-yellow envelope, strapped with rubber bands--which he kept in his hand. She was struck by the greater ease of his entry, and by the renewal of that sense of comradeship which had marked his bearing toward her in the old days in the cabin. The small comedy of introductory commonplace went off smoothly.
"Well?" he said then, with a little challenging laugh.
"I've been waiting for your move. You haven't made it."
She shook her head. "I've no move to make."
"Oh yes, you have--a great big move. You can easily say, Check. I doubt if you can make it, Checkmate."
"I'm afraid that's a game I don't know how to play."
He stared at her inquiringly--noting the disdain with which her chin tilted and her lip curled, though he could see it was a disdain suffused with sweetness.
"Do you mean that you wouldn't--wouldn't give me away?"
"I mean that you're either broaching a topic I don't understand or speaking a language I've never learned. If you don't mind, we won't discuss the subject, and we'll speak our mother-tongue--the mother-tongue of people like you and me."
He stared again. It took him some few seconds to understand her phraseology. In proportion as her meaning broke upon him, his face glowed. When he spoke it was with enthusiasm for her generosity in taking this stand rather than in gratitude for anything he was to gain by it.
"By Jove, you're a brick! You always were. I might have expected that this is exactly what you'd say."
"I hope so. I didn't expect that you'd talk of my giving you away, as you call it--to any one."
"But you're wrong," he said, with a return to the laughing bravado which concealed his inward repugnance to his position. "You're wrong. I'll give you that tip now. I'll fight fair. I sha'n't be grateful. I'll profit by your magnanimity. Remember it's my part in the world to be unscrupulous. It has to be. I've told you so. With me the end justifies the means--always; and when the end is to keep my word to Evie, it will make no difference to me that you were too high-minded to put the big obstacle in my way."