Each could see the other’s face plainly in that bright moonlight. She showed no more sign of agitation than he, and he was suave. Beatrice spoke. “Yes, I’ve ruined my dress. And the slippers--they’re pulp.” She glanced round. “What time is it?” “Half past one,” he announced, as the result of a look at his watch. “It’s later than I thought. I’m ready to go home now.” “I’ve plenty of time,” protested Richmond. “No. Let’s go. There’s nothing to stay for.” And she stepped into the boat, steadying herself with a hand on his shoulder as she passed him on her way to sit in the stern. It had been almost necessary that she steady herself somehow in passing him in that rather narrow rowboat. She was hardly conscious that she had touched him; he was touching her as a matter of course, and also his own guiding and steadying hand was on her arm. Yet the incident, apparently trifling, was in fact most significant in itself and fraught with highly important consequences. In the first place it showed that, though father and daughter fancied they were hating each other to the uttermost, they in reality were still father and daughter, with at least one strong, uncleft bond of sympathy through the recognition by each in the other of qualities both intensely admired--for two people who deeply hate do not touch each other except in anger. Also, it altered their immediate relationship; it softened the animosities that were raging for utterance in each, and made it impossible for the quarrel that was bound to come to be of exactly the same complexion--of the same peculiar character it would have taken had they not touched each other. When she was seated he pushed off and disposed himself at the oars. He kept to the middle of the lake, where the light was clear and strong. They had not gone many yards on that water journey of three miles before her father said: “You wanted to tell him what I warned you I would do?” “Yes.” “And then you intended to break your promise to me?” “No. I made no promise--not in so many words. But I was going to stand by the engagement. Peter has become repulsive to me, but--any man would be equally so. And I might as well marry and have done with.” “A few years from now,” said her father, “you will thank me for having saved you from your folly.” She dropped her hand into the water. The moon-beams glistened on her yellow hair, on her smooth, young face and neck. “You ought to have known,” pursued her father, “that I would not have told you I would ruin Wade unless it was impossible for him to escape. I have put his investments in such a position that I can wipe them out or not. What I’ll do will depend on whether you are foolish or sensible.” She glanced up for an instant. Then he was not so guilty as she had thought--that is, _perhaps_ he was not. “You say you didn’t intend to break the engagement,” he went on. “Why, then, did you come here to-night?”