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“So it would appear!” he exclaimed bitterly.

“Don’t judge us too harshly–or not, at least, till you have taken the trouble to learn our point of view. You consider the individual–we think only of the family.”

“Why don’t you take care to preserve it, then?”

“Ah, that’s what we do; in spite of every aberration of the individual. And so, when we saw it was impossible that my brother and his wife should live together, we simply transferred our allegiance to the child–we constituted him the family.”

“A precious kindness you did him! If the result is to give him back to his father.”

“That, I admit, is to be deplored; but his father is only a fraction of the whole. What we really do is to give him back to his race, his religion, his true place in the order of things.”

“His mother never tried to deprive him of any of those inestimable advantages!”

Madame de Treymes unclasped her hands with a slight gesture of deprecation.

“Not consciously, perhaps; but silences and reserves can teach so much. His mother has another point of view–“

“Thank heaven!” Durham interjected.

“Thank heaven for her–yes–perhaps; but it would not have done for the boy.”

Durham squared his shoulders with the sudden resolve of a man breaking through a throng of ugly phantoms.

“You haven’t yet convinced me that it won’t have to do for him. At the time of Madame de Malrive’s separation, the court made no difficulty about giving her the custody of her son; and you must pardon me for reminding you that the father’s unfitness was the reason alleged.”

Madame de Treymes shrugged her shoulders. “And my poor brother, you would add, has not changed; but the circumstances have, and that proves precisely what I have been trying to show you: that, in such cases, the general course of events is considered, rather than the action of any one person.”

“Then why is Madame de Malrive’s action to be considered?”

“Because it breaks up the unity of the family.”

“Unity–!” broke from Durham; and Madame de Treymes gently suffered his smile.

“Of the family tradition, I mean: it introduces new elements. You are a new element.”

“Thank heaven!” said Durham again.

She looked at him singularly. “Yes–you may thank heaven. Why isn’t it enough to satisfy Fanny?”

“Why isn’t what enough?”

“Your being, as I say, a new element; taking her so completely into a better air. Why shouldn’t she be content to begin a new life with you, without wanting to keep the boy too?”

Durham stared at her dumbly. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said at length.

“I mean that in her place–” she broke off, dropping her eyes. “She may have another son–the son of the man she adores.”

Durham rose from his seat and took a quick turn through the room. She sat motionless, following his steps through her lowered lashes, which she raised again slowly as he stood before her.

“Your idea, then, is that I should tell her nothing?” he said.

“Tell her now? But, my poor friend, you would be ruined!”

“Exactly.” He paused. “Then why have you told me?”

Under her dark skin he saw the faint colour stealing. “We see things so differently–but can’t you conceive that, after all that has passed, I felt it a kind of loyalty not to leave you in ignorance?”

“And you feel no such loyalty to her?”

“Ah, I leave her to you,” she murmured, looking down again.

Durham continued to stand before her, grappling slowly with his perplexity, which loomed larger and darker as it closed in on him.

“You don’t leave her to me; you take her from me at a stroke! I suppose,” he added painfully, “I ought to thank you for doing it before it’s too late.”

She stared. “I take her from you? I simply prevent your going to her unprepared. Knowing Fanny as I do, it seemed to me necessary that you should find a way in advance–a way of tiding over the first moment. That, of course, is what we had planned that you shouldn’t have. We meant to let you marry, and then–. Oh, there is no question about the result: we are certain of our case–our measures have been taken de loin.” She broke off, as if oppressed by his stricken silence. “You will think me stupid, but my warning you of this is the only return I know how to make for your generosity. I could not bear to have you say afterward that I had deceived you twice.”