“Grace told Miss Roberts, and Mother told Grace. Aunt Lavvy told Mother.” “Well, what?” Nina was careless of the abyss on whose brink she stood. “That Hal stole the pound belonging to the Bank.” “You’d better be careful what you’re saying, young man.” Nina laughed scornfully. “_Hal_, indeed!” William looked at her with round eyes that held something of pity. “You’d rather it was Bunny. But it wasn’t. It was Hal. I’m sorry he did it, but I’d rather for once it was him.” He paused. Then, with a disgusting lapse from chivalry: “You never thought much of Bunny next to Hal, did you?” Nina stood for a moment rigid, as though the whole of her life were in suspension. Then, angrily brushing William aside, she marched straight into the boys’ den. To Hal’s moody vision, she seemed strangely out of proportion in her big hard-ringing incredulity. He clenched his hands, dreading the next few minutes; wishing that a powerful wave could lift him bodily and set him down again on the leeward side of them. “William has the cheek to say----” “Yes. It’s true.” “You _didn’t_?” He was silent. “Hal, not ... you?” “Why shouldn’t it be me?” “Stealing?” Her mouth was drawn in pain as though she were sucking at some bitter fruit. He nodded. No hope of explaining with any success to Nina, as to Bunny, the slippery differences which separated his act from stealing. He had only just learnt himself that such differences existed; and Nina certainly would not and could not admit them, except as an attempt at cowardly shirking of consequences. He had hardly glanced at consequences, yet. “I wish I was dead,” Nina broke out suddenly. “Don’t be a damned idiot.” “It’s as ghastly for me as for you. Can’t you see that? I’ve always backed you up.” No, there were no surprises in conduct from Nina, as there had been from himself, from Aunt Lavvy and from Bunny. Every one of the raging contemptuous accusations which stammering she hurled at him, had already sounded across his mind during the past hour. Nina, like all those cool clear people who hold that it is bad form to show or even to feel emotion, was betrayed by a genuine blow into melodrama. “I’ve always backed you up. If you had got into any _decent_ scrape.... But--Good Lord!--the commonest board-school cad would have more sense of honour.... Men sometimes steal when they’re hungry--starving--but you---- What do you suppose they’ll say at Winborough? A girl from our school was expelled once for pinching half-a-crown that didn’t belong to her--serve her right--but she was a snivelling little rat, and her people were no class. I suppose you’d cheat at games now. Oh, I--I don’t want ever to see anybody again ... they’ll be laughing at me even if they don’t say it straight out. I’ve swanked about you, and you’ve let me down.” It was all in that last phrase.