“I’ve come, as you see--but I’ve come, please, to understand; and if you require to be alone with me, and if I break bread with you, it seems to me I should first know exactly where I am and to what you suppose I so commit myself.” He had thought it out and over and over, particularly the turn about breaking bread; though perhaps he didn’t give it, in her presence--this was impossible, her presence altered so many things--quite the full sound or the weight he had planned. But it had none the less come to his aid--it had made her perfectly grave. “You commit yourself to nothing. You’re perfectly free. It’s only I who commit myself.” On which, while she stood there as if all handsomely and deferentially waiting for him to consider and decide, he would have been naturally moved to ask her what she committed herself then _to_--so moved, that is, if he hadn’t, before saying it, thought more sharply still of something better. “Oh, that’s another thing.” “Yes, that’s another thing,” Kate Cookham returned. To which she added, “So _now_ won’t you sit down?” He sank with deliberation into the seat from which Captain Roper had risen; she went back to her own and while she did so spoke again. “I’m _not_ free. At least,” she said over her tea-tray, “I’m free only for this.” Everything was there before them and around them, everything massive and shining, so that he had instinctively fallen back in his chair as for the wondering, the resigned acceptance of it; where her last words stirred in him a sense of odd deprecation. Only for “that”? “That” was everything, at this moment, to his long inanition, and the effect, as if she had suddenly and perversely mocked him, was to press the spring of a protest. “Isn’t ‘this’ then riches?” “Riches?” she smiled over, handing him his cup--for she had triumphed in having struck from him a question. “I mean haven’t you a lot of money?” He didn’t care now that it was out; his cup was in his hand, and what was that but proved interest? He had succumbed to the social relation. “Yes, I’ve money. Of course you wonder--but I’ve wanted you to wonder. It was to make you take that in that I came. So now you know,” she said, leaning back where she faced him, but in a straighter chair and with her arms closely folded, after a fashion characteristic of her, as for some control of her nerves. “You came to show you’ve money?” “That’s one of the things. Not a lot--not even very much. But enough,” said Kate Cookham. “Enough? I should think so!” he again couldn’t help a bit crudely exhaling. “Enough for what I wanted. I don’t always live like this--not at all. But I came to the best hotel on purpose. I wanted to show you I could. Now,” she asked, “do you understand?” “Understand?” He only gaped. She threw up her loosed arms, which dropped again beside her. “I did it _for_ you--I did it _for_ you!” “‘For’ me----?” “What I did--what I did here of old.” He stared, trying to see it. “When you made me pay you?”