Margaret, left alone, calculated her resources and for all her whilom amazing vanity found them poor and wanting. What would Gabriel say to her this morning, how could she answer him? If he truly loved her and she pointed out to him, proved to him that their marriage, their happiness, need not be postponed, would he listen? She saw herself persuading him, but remembered that her father in many an argument had failed in making him admit that there was more than one standard of ethics, of right conduct. If he truly loved her! In this black moment she could doubt it. For unlike Peter Kennedy he would put honour before her love. Gabriel, her lover, came late, on slow reluctant feet. He loved her no less, although he knew she had deceived him, kept things back from him, complicated, perhaps, both their lives by her action. He knew her motives also, that it was because she loved him. He had no harsh judgment, only an overwhelming pang of tenderness. He, too, had faced the immediate future. He knew there must be no marriage whilst this thing hung over and menaced them. Yet to take her into his own keeping, guard and cherish her, was a desire sharp as a sword is sharp, and too poignant for words. He thought she would understand him. But more definitely perhaps he feared her opposition. The fear had slowed his feet. She did not know her lover when she dreaded his reproaches. When he came into the music room this grey, wet morning, he saw that she looked ill, but hardly guessed that she was apprehensive, and of him. He bent over her hands, kissed her hands, held them against his lips. “My dear, my dear.” Her mercurial spirits rose at a bound. “I thought you would reproach me.” “My poor darling!” “I wish I had told you.” “Never mind that now.” “But that was the worst of everything. You don’t know how I have reproached myself.” “You must not.” “You have not left off caring for me, then?” “I never cared for you so much.” “Why do you look so grave, so serious?” Her heart was shaking as she questioned him. In his tenderness there was something different, something inflexible. “My darling,” he said again. “That means...?” “I am going to ask you to let me stop that cheque.” “No.” “Fortunately it is Sunday. We have the day before us. I am going up by the two-o’clock. I’ve sent my bag down to the station. I’ve already been on to my lawyer by telephone and he will see me at his private house this afternoon. In my opinion we have nothing at all to fear. The King’s Proctor will not move on such evidence as she has to offer, she has overreached herself. We ought to have her in gaol by tomorrow night.” “In gaol!” “That is where she should be. She frightened you ... she shall go to gaol for it. Margaret, will you write to your bankers ... let me write....” “No!” she said again. “Sweetheart!” and he caressed her.