“That wasn’t what you told me the other night. You only told me that you had found out that I was right when I said you didn’t--you didn’t--know. John came in then, and I--” But then the words she had meant to say suddenly refused to be said. For the first time she realized that they were not true. He did not change his position, but she heard his breath coming quicker. He was holding himself hard. “I suppose I did commit such a piece of idiocy as that. It’s just what I’d be likely to do. I’m getting tired of being such an utterly--hopeless--” It was her hand, laid lightly on his lips, that checked him there. “You mustn’t say such things about yourself any more,” she said. She took her hand away, but remained standing close beside him. Still he did not raise his eyes. “You are stupid this morning, though,” she said, and her voice was quivering. “Jack--Jack, are you--going to make me--” Then, at last, he rose swiftly to his feet; and he looked at her as though to make up in that first moment for a six months’ blindness. He caught her hands timidly, as though he expected that they would resist; but they lay quite contentedly in his and he gripped them tighter. “Do they mean what they’re telling me?” he asked breathlessly. “Do you know what they’re telling me?” But he needed no other answer than what he saw in her face, and though he let go her hands, it was that he might hold her close in the circle of his arms. “You didn’t believe what I said that night, did you, Dick? You knew what I was trying to say.” A tremulous little sigh of complete happiness was all her answer at first, but afterward she said:-- “Yes, I knew, of course, all the time. I told myself that you meant that you had found out you didn’t care, and I tried to make myself believe it. But if I’d been afraid that I really should believe it--” He interrupted her, but not by speaking. There are occasions when arbitrary divisions of time, such as minutes, cease to have any particular significance, and we can but guess from collateral evidence how much later it was when Dick, after a glance into the street below, said with a laugh,-- “There comes John, now.” “Let him come. He’s a malevolent sort of wretch. He laid his plans, you see, to come down and interrupt us again, just at a--a critical moment; but for once he’s too late. We foiled him.” “We?” she questioned demurely. “He’d have been here in plenty of time if--” But she should not have expected to be allowed to finish a sentence like that. “Jack! Let me go. Please let me go. Oh, he’s coming!” “It will be such a fine surprise for Mr. Bagsbury,” he answered placidly. But John was not to have his surprise just then. Before he reached the outer office he was stopped by Mr. Peters.