Then he made doleful reply: "I must try on my side--if you can't try on yours." She came out with him to the hall and into the doorway, and here he put her the question he held he could least answer from his own wit.

"Why have you never let me come before ?" "Because my aunt would have seen you, and I should have had to tell her how I came to know you." "And what would have been the objection to that ?" "It would have entailed other explanations; there would at any rate have been that danger." "Surely she knew you went every day to church," Stransom objected.
"She didn't know what I went for." "Of me then she never even heard ?" "You'll think I was deceitful.

But I didn't need to be!" He was now on the lower door-step, and his hostess held the door half-closed behind him.

Through what remained of the opening he saw her framed face.

He made a supreme appeal.