She came out from behind the piano and stood in front of him, as erect as a silver birch, and as slim and young. There was a great indignation all about her. His eager hands went out, and fell. He was not a brute. It would be cowardly to touch this amazing child. She was armed with fearlessness and virginity--and he had mistaken these things for callousness. "I don't know what to say," he said. "You stagger me. How long are you going to hide behind this youthfulness? When are you going to be old enough to be honest? Men have patience only up to a point. At any rate, you didn't claim youth when Gray asked you to marry him--though you may have done so afterward. Did you?" She kept silent. But her eyes ran over him with contempt. According to her, she had given him no right to put such questions. He ignored it. It was undeserved. It was she who deserved contempt, not he. And he threw it back at her in a strange incoherent outburst in which, all the same, there was a vibrating note of gladness and relief. And all the while, unmoved by the passion into which he broke, she stood watching with a curious gravity his no longer immobile face. She was thinking about Martin. She was redeveloping Martin's expression when she had opened the door of her bedroom the night of her marriage and let him out. What about her creed, then? Was she hiding behind youthfulness? Were there, after all, certain things that must be paid for? Was she already old enough to be what Alice and this man called honest? Was every man made of the stuff that only gave for what he hoped to get in return? His words trailed off. He was wasting them, he saw. She was looking through his head. But he rejoiced as to one thing like a potter who opens the door of his oven and finds his masterpiece unbroken. And silence fell upon them, interrupted only by the intermittent humming of passing cars. Finally Palgrave took the cigarette box out of Joan's hand and put it down on a little table and stood looking more of a man than might have been expected. "I've always hoped that one day I should meet you--just you," he said quietly; "and when I did, I knew that it would be to love. Well, I've told you. Do what you can for me until you decide that you're grown up. I'll wait." And he turned and went away, and presently she heard a door shut and echo, and slow footsteps in the street below. Where was Martin? VI She wanted Martin. Everything that had happened that night made her want Martin. He knew that she was a kid, and treated her as such. He didn't stand up and try and force her forward into being a woman--although, of all men, he had the right. He was big and generous and had given her his name and house and the run of the world, but not from his lips ever came the hard words that she had heard that night. How extraordinary that they should have come from Alice as well as from Gilbert.