"I say it because it's true," she returned, her voice quivering. "Thank God you haven't committed forgery! And thank God I was in time to stop your taking this cowardly--utterly cowardly--way out of things. You've got into a mess, and you wanted to get out of it--the easiest way. Did you ever stop to think of us--afterwards? Of your uncle, and me, or of Doreen Neville--all of us who cared for you? Oh! I wouldn't have believed it of you, Tony!" "You don't know how bad things are," he said desperately. "You've _got_ to be hurt--you, and uncle, and--and Doreen." His voice broke, then steadied again. "I've got myself in such a mess that a bullet was the best way out--for everybody." "I don't believe it," answered Ann, with stubborn courage. "There's some other way. There always is--only we've got to look for it--find it." Suddenly her heart overflowed in pity for this white-faced, haggard boy who must have suffered so bitterly, must have gone down into the veriest depths of despair, before he had been driven to seek that short and terrible way out of life. She held out her hands to him. "Tony, let me help! Let's look for a way out together. I'm your pal. I've always been your pal. Why did you bear all this alone instead of letting me share?" At the touch of her strong, kind little hands he broke down for a moment. Turning aside, he leaned his arms on the chimneypiece and hid his face. A hard, stifled sob tore its way through his throat and his shoulders shook. Ann remained silent, giving him time in which to recover his self-command. Her heart was full almost to breaking-point with that eager, mothering tenderness which a woman instinctively feels for a man in trouble. She is the eternal mother, then--he the eternal child. When at last Tony lifted his head from his arms he was very pale, but his eyes held a look of resolution. "I'll tell you," he said jerkily. Bit by bit the painful story came out--the same familiar story, only infinitely aggravated, of high play, losses, then still higher play in a desperate hope of recovery, and finally, the confession of heavy borrowings, of notes of hand given and accepted--and now falling due. "That's the devil of it--the time's up and they're due for payment," wound up Tony hoarsely. "Payment! And I haven't twenty pounds in the world." As Ann listened to the stumbling recital, her face paled and grew very grave. This was worse--far worse than she had anticipated. "How much, do you owe--altogether, Tony?" she asked at last, when he had finished speaking. "Twelve hundred." "Twelve hundred pounds!" The largeness of the amount left her momentarily aghast, and the vague idea she had been harbouring that Robin and she might scrape up a hundred or two between them and so put matters straight crumbled to atoms.