"If Mr. Guion is ever in a position to pay me back," Davenant said,
slowly, in some bewilderment, "of course I'll take it."
"Quite so; and I think I may say that with a little time--let us say a
year--we shall be able to meet--"
"It's a good bit of money," Davenant warned him.
"I know that; but if you'll give us a little leeway--as I know you
will--"
"He means," Olivia spoke up, "that he'll sell his property--and whatever
else he has--and pay you."
"I don't want that," Davenant said, hastily.
"But I do. It's a point of honor with me not to let another man
shoulder--"
"And it's a point of honor with me, Rupert--"
"To stand by me," he broke in, quickly.
"I can't see it that way. What you propose is entirely against my
judgment. It's fantastic; it's unreal. I want you to understand that if
you attempted to carry it out I shouldn't marry you. Whatever the
consequences either to you or to me--_I shouldn't marry you_."
"And if I didn't attempt it? Would you marry me then?"
She looked up, then down, then at Davenant, then away from him. Finally
she fixed her gaze on Ashley.
"Yes," she said at last. "If you'll promise to let this wild project
drop, I'll marry you whenever you like. I'll waive all the other
difficulties--"
Davenant came forward, his hand outstretched. "I think I must say
good-by now, Miss Guion--"
"No; wait," Ashley commanded. "This matter concerns you, by Jove!"
Olivia sprang to her feet. "No; it doesn't, Rupert," she said, hastily.
"No; it doesn't," Davenant repeated after her. "It's not my affair. I
decline to be brought into it. I think I must say good-by now, Miss
Guion--"
"Listen, will you!" Ashley said, impatiently. "I'm not going to say
anything either of you need be afraid of. I'm only asking you to do me
the justice of trying to see things from my point of view. You may think
it forced or artificial or anything you please; but unfortunately, as an
officer and a gentleman, I've got to take it. The position you'd put me
in would be this--of playing a game--and a jolly important game at
that--in which the loser loses to me on purpose."
Ashley found much satisfaction in this way of putting it. Without
exposing him to the necessity of giving details, it made clear his
perception of what was going on. Moreover, it secured him _le beau
rôle_, which for a few minutes he feared he might have compromised. In
the look he caught, as it flashed between Olivia and Davenant, he saw
the signs of that appreciation he found it so hard to do without--the
appreciation of Rupert Ashley as the chivalrous Christian gentleman, at
once punctilious and daring, who would count all things as loss in order
to achieve the highest type of manhood. If in the back of his mind he
had the conviction, hardly venturing to make itself a thought, "In the
long run it pays," it was but little to his discredit, since he could
scarcely have descended from a line of shrewd, far-sighted Anglo-Saxon
forefathers without making some such computation.
"If we're going to play a game," he continued, addressing Davenant,
before the latter had time to speak, "for Heaven's sake let us play it
straight--like men. Let the winner win and the loser lose--"
"I've no objection to that, Colonel, when I _do_ play--but at present--"
"Look here," Ashley said, with a new inspiration; "I put it to you--I
put it to you as a man--simply as a _man_--without any highfalutin
principles whatever. Suppose I'd done what you've done--and given my
bottom dollar--"
"But I haven't."
"Well, no matter! Suppose I had done what you've done--and you were in
my place--would you, as a man--simply as a _man_, mind you--be willing
to go off with the lady whom I had freed from great anxiety--to say the
least--and be happy forever after--and so forth--with nothing but a
Thank-you-sir? Come now! Would you?"
It was evident that Davenant was shy of accepting this challenge. He
colored and looked uneasy--all the more so because Olivia lifted her
eyes to him appealingly, as though begging him to come to her support.
It was perhaps in the belief that he would do so that she said,
earnestly, leaning forward a little:
"Tell him, Mr. Davenant, tell him."
"I don't see what it's got to do with me--" Davenant began to protest.
"It's got everything to do with you," Ashley broke in. "Since you've
created the situation you can't shirk its responsibilities."
"Tell him, Mr. Davenant, tell him," Olivia repeated. "Would you, or
would you not?"
He looked helplessly from one to the other. "Well, then--I wouldn't," he
said, simply.
"There you are!" Ashley cried, triumphantly, moving away from the wall
and turning toward Olivia.
She was plainly disappointed. Davenant could so easily have said, "I
would." Nevertheless, she answered quietly, picking up the paper-knife
that lay on the table and turning it this way and that as though
studying the tints of the mother-of-pearl in the dying light:
"It doesn't matter to me, Rupert, what other people would do or would
not do. If you persist in this attempt--this mad attempt--I shall not
marry you."
He strode to the table, looking down at her averted face and bent head.
"Then we're at a deadlock."
She gave him a quick glance. "No; it isn't a deadlock, because--because
there's still a way out."
He leaned above her, supporting himself with his hand on the table. "And
it's a way I shall never take so long as you can't say--what you
admitted a little while ago that you couldn't say--"
"I can't say it," she murmured, her face still further averted; "but all
the same it's cruel of you to make it a condition."
He bent lower till his lips almost touched her hair. "It's cruel of
you," he whispered, "to put me in the position where I must."
The room and the hall behind it were now so dim that Davenant had no
difficulty in slipping between the portières and getting away.