"All right, walk on!" she said, declining his proffered assistance. And then, as they walked, he began to unfold to her his reasons for his behaviour with Leonetta in the woods that morning. He explained how he had reckoned that he would be back in time to tell her first, and that had it not been for the fury of Denis's indignation, he would certainly have succeeded. They reached the inn and repaired to the bar parlour, and over the frugal meal he continued his explanation. She listened intently, raised an objection from time to time, which he deftly parried, and thus gradually the whole story was made plain to her. She revived visibly under the effects of the refreshment, and the precise and convincing manner of his narrative; and when at last the complete chain of consequence had been revealed to her, he left her very much recovered while he went in search of some vehicle to convey them back to "The Fastness." In about twenty minutes he returned with a broken-down old brougham--the only vehicle the village possessed,--and in a moment they were rattling away slowly in the direction of Brineweald. "Then what made you look for me with such anxiety?" she enquired, once they were well on their way. "Why did you guess so positively that something tragic would happen? Why didn't you simply assume that my fainting fits had returned?" He caught her hand in his. "My dear Cleo," he replied, "perhaps I am disgustingly arrogant, perhaps I am quite unfit for decent society, but it occurred to me that your fainting fits had been, not the outcome of thwarted passion, but the result of mortified vanity. You never loved Denis. I felt somehow that in this instance, not your vanity alone, but your deepest passions were involved, and that when you would act from thwarted passion, either against yourself, against me, or against Leonetta, you would proceed to violence. Was I wrong? Was I hopelessly vain and foolish to imagine that in this instance, because I was concerned and not Denis, therefore something more tragic was to be expected?" She looked away and a smile began to dawn on her tortured features. "What about Baby?" she demanded after a while. "Did you consider her feelings?" "Did I consider her feelings? How can you ask me that, seeing that I was leaving no stone unturned to save her from the toils of an arch-flappist?" She almost laughed. "But didn't you go unnecessarily far with the poor kid?"