'Why did you try to make love to her?'
This inquiry was made in a tone so expressive of an unbiassed truth-seeking habit that Bernard's mirth was not immediately quenched. Nevertheless, he replied with sufficient gravity—
'To test her fidelity to you. Could you have expected anything else? You told me you were afraid she was a latent coquette. You gave me a chance, and I tried to ascertain.'
'And you found she was not. Is that what you mean?'
'She 's as firm as a rock. My dear Gordon, Miss Vivian is as firm as the firmest of your geological formations.'
Gordon shook his head with a strange positive persistence.
'You are talking nonsense. You are not serious. You are not telling me the truth. I don't believe that you attempted to make love to her. You would n't have played such a game as that. It would n't have been honorable.'
Bernard flushed a little; he was irritated.
'Oh come, don't make too much of a point of that! Did n't you tell me before that it was a great opportunity?'
'An opportunity to be wise—not to be foolish!'
'Ah, there is only one sort of opportunity,' cried Bernard. 'You exaggerate the reach of human wisdom.'
'Suppose she had let you make love to her,' said Gordon. 'That would have been a beautiful result of your experiment.'
'I should have seemed to you a rascal, perhaps, but I should have saved you from a latent coquette. You would owe some thanks for that.'
'And now you have n't saved me,' said Gordon, with a simple air of noting a fact.
'You assume—in spite of what I say—that she is a coquette!'
'I assume something because you evidently conceal something. I want the whole truth.'
Bernard turned back to the window with increasing irritation.
'If he wants the whole truth he shall have it,' he said to himself.
He stood a moment in thought and then he looked at his companion again.
'I think she would marry you—but I don't think she cares for you.'
Gordon turned a little pale, but he clapped his hands together.
'Very good,' he exclaimed. 'That 's exactly how I want you to speak.'
'Her mother has taken a great fancy to your fortune and it has rubbed off on the girl, who has made up her mind that it would be a pleasant thing to have thirty thousand a year, and that her not caring for you is an unimportant detail.'
'I see—I see,' said Gordon, looking at his friend with an air of admiration for his frank and lucid way of putting things.
Now that he had begun to be frank and lucid, Bernard found a charm in it, and the impulse under which he had spoken urged him almost violently forward.
'The mother and daughter have agreed together to bag you, and Angela, I am sure, has made a vow to be as nice to you after marriage as possible. Mrs. Vivian has insisted upon the importance of that; Mrs. Vivian is a great moralist.'
Gordon kept gazing at his friend; he seemed positively fascinated.
'Yes, I have noticed that in Mrs. Vivian,' he said.
'Ah, she 's a very nice woman!'
'It 's not true, then,' said Gordon, 'that you tried to make love to Angela?'
Bernard hesitated a single instant.
'No, it is n't true. I calumniated myself, to save her reputation. You insisted on my giving you a reason for my not liking her—I gave you that one.'
'And your real reason—'
'My real reason is that I believe she would do you what I can't help regarding as an injury.'
'Of course!' and Gordon, dropping his interested eyes, stared for some moments at the carpet. 'But it is n't true, then, that you discovered her to be a coquette?'
'Ah, that 's another matter.'
'You did discover it all the same?'
'Since you want the whole truth—I did!'
'How did you discover it?' Gordon asked, clinging to his right of interrogation.
Bernard hesitated.
'You must remember that I saw a great deal of her.'
