In these days the old man's urgency of Tollman's suit was rarely silenced, but one afternoon he pitched it to a new key, and the girl's habitual expression of weariness gave way to one of startled amazement. "Of one phase of the matter," he said, "I have never spoken. I refrained because Eben was unwilling that you should know, but justice is justice--you should honor your benefactor." "Honor my benefactor? I don't understand." The old man shook his lion-like head and, out of the parchment of his bony face, his eyes burned grimly. "This house--this farm--all of it--we have only by the sufferance of Eben's generosity, and yet I've heard men call him close." Conscience thought that she had lost the possibility of being stunned, but now she sat speechless as her father continued. "I never was a competent business man and I put affairs in Eben's hands too late. He concealed from me how dire my straits were--and our income continued--but it was coming out of his resources--not mine. If Tollman had chosen to demand payment, we would have been wiped out." "How long have you known this?" "Since shortly after my affliction came upon me." Conscience moved over and stood by the window. She pressed her temples with her finger tips and spoke in a dead quiet. "You have known--all that time--and you never told me. You have urged his suit and you never let me guess that my suitor had already--bought me and paid for me." With a low and bitter laugh--or the fragment of a laugh, she turned and left the room. After weeks of patient silence, Tollman asked once more, "Conscience, is there still no hope for me?" To his surprise she met his questioning gaze very directly and answered, "That depends on your terms." "I make no terms," he hastened to declare. "I only petition." "If you ask a wife who can be a real wife to you--who can give you all her love and life--then the answer must still be no," she went on steadily with something like a doggedness of resignation. "I can't lie to you. I have only a broken heart. Beyond friendship and gratitude, I have nothing to offer you. I can't even promise that I will ever stop loving--him. But--" her words came with the flatness of unending soul-fag--"I suppose I can give you the lesser things; fidelity, respect; all the petty allegiance that can go on without fire or spirit."