"Will you stop for a moment, please?" she said. "I am afraid I must have seemed ungracious. After all, I ought to be very grateful to you." He shook his head. "No!" he answered. "It is always I who must be your debtor. I ought to have been firmer with your brother when I sent him to this man Sinclair to make terms. It was a desperate enterprise, after all, and I ought to have realized the danger of your brother being tempted to use violence. To me he was nothing more than a unit of humanity, and I took him at his word. If he had brought me the paper I wanted, I was quite prepared to ask him no questions whatever, and he would have been a rich man. I can't help feeling that in a sense I am responsible for his present position and yours." She looked away from him. Her eyes were fixed upon the horizon. She appeared to be steadily thinking the matter out. The wind blew little wisps of fair hair over her face. Her eyes were steadfast, her forehead a little wrinkled. She seemed to be endeavoring to arrive at a conscientious decision. "No!" she said, after some time, "I cannot see that you are to blame. I am sure that it never entered into your head that my brother might be tempted to use violence." Deane looked away with a little frown. In his heart he knew very well that he was not so sure! "Well," he said, "we will let that go. At any rate, my responsibility to you remains. Tell me what I can do? How can I help you?" She shook her head. "I am going back to my work," she said. "I need no help." "Your work?" he repeated. She nodded, with a little sigh. "I am a typist," she said. "You know what that means,--genteel starvation, long hours, gray days. Never mind, I am almost used to it." "You need be a typist no longer unless you choose," he said. "Part of what I promised to your brother belongs to you." She shook her head. "Don't speak of it!" she exclaimed. "I should feel that it was blood money." "At least let me hear from you sometimes," he said. "Don't let me lose sight of you altogether while your brother is unable to help you." She hesitated. Then, lifting her eyes to his, "I don't believe," she said softly, "that you would tell me anything that was not true." "I don't believe that I should," he answered. "Then tell me this," she said, "honestly. When you made my brother that offer, when you sent him to deal with this man Sinclair, can you tell me that you had not an idea in your mind that he might be led on to do something rash?" Deane hesitated. He was not a man of over-strict scruples, but he hated lies. Somehow or other, it seemed to him impossible to look at this girl and tell her anything that was not the truth. "I am not altogether sure," he answered. "At the back of my head there was just the idea that your brother was desperate, that he would gain what he wanted, somehow or other."