essentially all moral pressure, the presence of this element was almost identical with her own presence. It wasn’t perhaps that he felt he was dealing with her straight, but it was certainly as if she had been dealing straight with _him_. She was reaching him somehow by the lengthened arm of the spirit, and he was having to that extent to take her into account; but he wasn’t reaching her in turn, not making her take _him_; he was only reaching Sarah, who appeared to take so little of him. “Something has clearly passed between you and Chad,” he presently said, “that I think I ought to know something more about. Does he put it all,” he smiled, “on me?” “Did you come out,” she asked, “to put it all on _him?_” But he replied to this no further than, after an instant, by saying: “Oh it’s all right. Chad I mean’s all right in having said to you—well anything he may have said. I’ll _take_ it all—what he does put on me. Only I must see him before I see you again.” She hesitated, but she brought it out. “Is it absolutely necessary you should see me again?” “Certainly, if I’m to give you any definite word about anything.” “Is it your idea then,” she returned, “that I shall keep on meeting you only to be exposed to fresh humiliation?” He fixed her a longer time. “Are your instructions from Mrs. Newsome that you shall, even at the worst, absolutely and irretrievably break with me?” “My instructions from Mrs. Newsome are, if you please, my affair. You know perfectly what your own were, and you can judge for yourself of what it can do for you to have made what you have of them. You can perfectly see, at any rate, I’ll go so far as to say, that if I wish not to expose myself I must wish still less to expose _her_.” She had already said more than she had quite expected; but, though she had also pulled up, the colour in her face showed him he should from one moment to the other have it all. He now indeed felt the high importance of his having it. “What is your conduct,” she broke out as if to explain—“what is your conduct but an outrage to women like _us?_ I mean your acting as if there can be a doubt—as between us and such another—of his duty?” He thought a moment. It was rather much to deal with at once; not only the question itself, but the sore abysses it revealed. “Of course they’re totally different kinds of duty.” “And do you pretend that he has any at all—to such another?”