There was a long silence, while Jean tried to fit in the new facts she had learned with her knowledge of her father’s character. She was a little afraid that Tormarin might misunderstand her impulsive outburst of indignation. “Don’t think that I am sitting in judgment on my father,” she said at last. “In a way, I can--even understand his doing such a thing. You know, for the last two years of my mother’s life I was with them both constantly, and anyone living with them could understand their doing all kinds of things that ordinary people wouldn’t do.” She paused, as though seeking words that might make her meaning clearer. “They would never really mean to hurt anyone, but they were just like a couple of children together--gloriously irresponsible and happy. I always felt years older than either of them. Glyn used to say I was ‘cursed with a damnable sense of duty’”--laughing rather ruefully. “I suppose I am. Probably I inherit it from our old Puritan ancestors on the Peterson side. I know I couldn’t have cheerfully run off and taken my happiness at the cost of someone else’s prior right.” A look of extreme bitterness crossed Tormarin’s face. “Wait till you’re tempted,” he said shortly. “Wait till _what you want_ wars against what you ought to have--what you’ve the right to take.” For a moment she made no answer. Put bluntly like that, the matter suddenly presented itself to her as one of the poignant possibilities of life. Supposing--supposing such a choice should ever be demanded of her? She felt a vague fear catch at her heart, an indefinable dread. When at last she spoke, the eyes she lifted to meet Tor-marin’s were troubled. In them he could read the innate honesty which was prepared to face the question he had raised, and behind that--courage. A young, untried courage, not sure of itself, it is true, but still courage that only waited till some call should wake it into fighting actuality. “I hope,” she said with a wistful humility that was rather touching, “I hope I should stick it out One’s ideals, and duty, and other people’s rights--it would be horrible to scrap the lot--just for love.” “Worth it, perhaps. You”--his voice was the least bit uneven--“you haven’t been up against love--yet.” Again she was conscious of that little catch at her heart--the same convulsive tightening of the muscles as one experiences when a telegram is put into one’s hand which may, or may not, contain bad news. “You haven’t been up against love yet.” The words recalled her knowledge of the tragic episode that lay in Tormarin’s own past. The whole history she did not know--only the odds and ends of gossip which one woman had confided to another. But here, in the man’s curt brevity of speech, surely lay proof that he had suffered. And if he had suffered, it followed that he must have cared deeply for the woman who had thrown him aside for the sake of another man.