Vashti straightened herself up. Her eyes were on him as he set the plate down on the table, but he avoided them, attempting a small forced laugh. The laugh was a dead failure. Silence followed it, and in the silence he felt horribly aware that she was grasping the truth--the humiliating truth; that moment by moment the scales were falling from her eyes that still persistently sought his. The silence was broken by the noise of a poker falling against the fender. He started, met her gaze for a moment, and again averted his. "You don't mean to say----" Her voice trailed off, in pitiful surmise. Silence again; and in the silence he heard her sink back into the arm chair--and knew no more until, at the sound of one strangling sob, terrible to hear, he found himself standing at the arm of her chair and bending over her. "My dear!" He used the familiar Island speech. "My dear, you must not--please!" "And I have been living on you, ruining you!" "My dear ... it is all paid for. It was paid for to-day. If ever a man was glad of his guest, I am he." But she bent her head over the arm of the chair, sobbing silently. He saw the heave of her shoulders, and it afflicted him beyond words. But, though he longed, he dared not put out a hand to comfort her. "You mistake--yes, you mistake.... It has been nothing.... I was only too glad," he kept stammering weakly. She pulled herself together and sat upright. A moment her tear-stained eyes met his, then turned to the fire, which had begun to dance again on its small heap of coals. "Now I see," said she, resting an elbow on the arm of the chair and so supporting her chin, while she stared resolutely into the blaze. She had resumed command of her voice. "Ah, pardon me, now I understand many things that puzzled me at first.... I--I am not a fool in money matters." She hesitated. "I know you are not," he assured her gently. "And that, if you will understand, increased the small difficulty." "Yes, I understand. But somehow--it was a long time since I had been acquainted with--with----" "Want," he suggested. "Since you know the worst, do not hurt me more than you are obliged." "God knows," she said, after an interval of musing, "I would hurt you last of all living men. Will you be kind to me, and trust me?" "On conditions." "Yes?" She glanced up with a strange eagerness in her eyes. "What conditions?" "That you do not pity me at all; that you believe I have suffered nothing, or only such pain as has edged the joy of serving you." She looked away and into the fire. "You make me very proud," she said. "Yes. I can easily grant your conditions. I could not pity a man who practised so noble a courtesy." The Commandant shook his head with a whimsical smile. "My dear," he answered, "it's undeniably pleasant to stand well in your opinion, but I am not used to compliments, and you run some risk of making me a vain fellow. You asked me to trust you. With what?" "With the reason why you are poor."