She, on her part, noticed the weariness in his eyes, and found it necessary to remind herself of his offences, for the story he told was not without its effect on her. It was, though he omitted most of his own doings, a somewhat graphic one, and she realized a little of the struggle he and the handful of men Devine had been able to send him had made, half-fed, amidst the snow. Still, for no very apparent reason, his composure and the way he kept himself in the background irritated her. "One would wonder why you put up with so much hardship. Wasn't it a little inconsequent?" she said. Brooke's gaunt face flushed. "Well," he said, "one is under the painful necessity of earning a living." "Still, could it not be done a little more easily?" "I don't know that it is, under any circumstances, a remarkably simple thing, but that is not quite the question, and, since you seem to insist, I'll answer you candidly. In my case, it was almost astonishingly inconsequent--that is, as I expect you mean, about the last thing any one would naturally have expected from me. Still, I felt that, after what I had done, I had a good deal to pull up, you see; though that is a motive with which, as I noticed when I mentioned it once before, you apparently can scarcely credit me." Barbara smiled. "It was your own actions that made it difficult." "I admitted on another occasion that I am not exactly proud of them, but there was some slight excuse. There usually is, you see." "Of course!" said Barbara. "You need not be diffident. In your case there were the dollars of which my brother-in-law plundered you." Brooke looked at her with a little glint in his eyes. "You," he said, slowly, "can be very merciless." "Well," said Barbara, who met his gaze with quiet composure, "I might have been less so had I not expected quite so much from you. After all, it does not greatly matter--and here is the tea." "I think it matters a good deal, but perhaps we needn't go into that," said Brooke, who took the cup she handed him. "You have poured out tea for me on several occasions now, but still, each one recalls the first time you did it at the Quatomac ranch." The same thing had happened to Barbara, but she laughed. "It, presumably, made no difference to the tea, and yours runs some risk of getting cold." Brooke appeared to be holding his cup with quite unnecessary firmness, and she fancied his color was a trifle paler than it had been, but he smiled. "I really do not remember that it tasted any the worse," he said. "Perhaps you can remember how the sound of the river came in through the open door that night, and the light flickered in the draughts. It showed up your face in profile, and I can still picture Jimmy sitting by the stove, with his mouth wide open, watching you. He had evidently never seen anything of the kind before."