"
"Possibly," said Miltoun. "It will lose me the election, for all that."
Then, dimly conscious that their last words had revealed the difference
of their temperaments and creeds, they stared at one another.
"No," said Courtier, "I never will believe that people can be so mean!"
"Until they are."
"Anyway, though we get at it in different ways, we agree."
Miltoun leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece, and shading his face with
his hand, said:
"You know her story. Is there any way out of that, for her?"
On Courtier's face was the look which so often came when he was speaking
for one of his lost causes--as if the fumes from a fire in his heart had
mounted to his head.
"Only the way," he answered calmly, "that I should take if I were you."
"And that?"
"The law into your own hands."
Miltoun unshaded his face. His gaze seemed to have to travel from an
immense distance before it reached Courtier. He answered:
"Yes, I thought you would say that."
CHAPTER XVII
When everything, that night, was quiet, Barbara, her hair hanging loose
outside her dressing gown, slipped from her room into the dim corridor.
With bare feet thrust into fur-crowned slippers which made no noise, she
stole along looking at door after door. Through a long Gothic window,
uncurtained, the mild moonlight was coming.
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