As she reached the stairway she halted impulsively with her hand on the latch, and stood poised there with an expression of baffling, half-eager expectancy. The sensitive beauty of her face and the slender grace of her body seemed for a moment to cast aside their fatigue and to invite him, but Boone stood resolutely the width of the room away. Had he known it, that was a moment in which he might have grasped a more vital rehabilitation. Had he then offered again the explanation for which he had once been denied opportunity, her readiness to hear him would have been eager. At that moment she was once more his for the taking. He need only have extended his arms and said, "Come!" and she would have responded instantly and gladly. She was receptive, stirred, but one thing her pride still inhibited. She could not make the advances. Boone let his moment pass; let it pass unrecognized with the blindness of life's perverse coincidence. At that precise instant, a mood was upon him which was no intrinsic reflection of his own spirit, but rather the reflection of all the stormy transitions of the night. She had seen him at a crisis when he had been on the verge of collapse like a bridge whose centre rests upon a span of flawed steel. True, he had not actually collapsed, but, save for her intervention, he would have done so. Now his mortification withered him and perversely expressed itself in resentment against her--for having witnessed his shame. He owed her everything--so much that his self-respect was bankrupted--and if he could have hated her, he would have hated her just then. He even fancied that he did. He saw in her a cold, impersonal deity, consciously superior to himself and secretly triumphant over his weakness. So he not only let the moment pass, but he rebuffed its unspoken invitation. "I owe you everything," he said with the cold ungraciousness of a grudging confession. "If you hadn't come, I'd have had a hell in my conscience tomorrow. I'd have been a murderer. I even tried to force you to admit that it was for me, myself, that you cared enough to do it. I'm ashamed of that.... It won't happen again." He paused and his voice was bitterly edged when he went on. "I begged for the chance to explain things--when there was still time. You refused to hear me. Now I wouldn't explain if _you_ begged _me_ to--That's over, but I acknowledge the debt I owe you--for tonight. It's a heavier debt than any man can stand in and keep his self-respect." * * * * * Morgan and Anne had been to the theatre, and when they came back to the house the lawyer had drawn from his pocket a small package, and while Anne opened it he looked on. It was an engagement ring, and quite worthy of his connoisseur's selection. But when he put out his hand to take hers, she drew it back and spoke impulsively: "Before you put that on--Morgan--there's something I must tell you."