"Oho! So that’s your idea. I see your point now. You’ve got the kind of love that weighs and balances, have you? You won’t take more than you can give! Why, young miss, let me tell you, you may think that’s high-flown and noble—it’s no such thing! If you want to know what it is, it’s your great-grandfather’s arrogance turned inside out, that’s all! If you refuse to marry the man you love, because you have nothing to offer him, you’re as bad as I was when I refused because my lover had nothing to offer me. There’s a pride of poverty that’s as detestable as the pride of riches. You talk about love! You don’t know what the word means. If you did, you’d see that the real thing is beyond such mean dickering. In love _fair exchange is low snobbery_." The girl stared silently into her grandmother’s face. Two bright spots were glowing in the withered cheeks, the old woman’s eyes shot forth the fire of youth. For the second time Katherine felt that the drawbridge was down. Impulsively, she took a step forward, grasping one of the little old hands, folding it tight in both her own. "Grandmother, I want to tell you something—I see what you mean and—I know it’s true. But—but—there’s something else——" Madam Crewe did not withdraw her hand. It almost seemed to Katherine as if its clasp tightened on hers. "What else?" "When he—when Dr. Ballard first spoke to me about his grandfather, he said, ’But after all, the only thing that really counts is character.’ He said: ’One can afford to whistle at family-trees if one’s own record is clean!’ He said: ’After all, what’s most important, is to be straight goods one’s self. If I’d lied, or was a coward or had taken what belonged to some one else, or had any other dirty rag of memory trailing after me, I’d hesitate to ask any one to share my life with me, but——’" "Well?" "Grandmother—_I’ve_ the kind of dirty rag of memory, he spoke about. I’m a coward—I’ve lied—I’ve taken what belonged to some one else." *CHAPTER XIII* Madam Crewe said nothing. She gazed into Katherine’s face blankly for a moment, then gradually withdrew her eyes to fix them on a bit of sky visible through the bowed shutters of the open window. When the silence became unendurable, "Won’t you speak to me, grandmother?" the girl pleaded. "Won’t you let me feel you understand?" There was a long pause before any answer came. "Understand? No, I don’t understand. How could one understand one’s own flesh and blood being, doing—what you describe? That story would be perpetually new—perpetually incomprehensible. But perhaps you’re vaporing. Using big words for insignificant things. A child’s trick. Tell me the truth, and be quick about it." There was something so formidable in the tiny old woman sitting there, coldly withdrawn into herself again, controlling any show of natural emotion with a fairly uncanny skill, that Katherine quailed before her.