"Well, I can't understand all that," said St. John, with rueful
sulkiness, from which he brisked up to ask, as if by a sudden
inspiration, "If it was only to one person, why couldn't you deny it, and
throw the onus on the other fellow?" He looked up at Hewson, standing
nerveless before him, from where he lay mournfully wallowing in an
easy-chair, as if now for the first time, there might be a gleam of hope
for them both in some such notion.

Hewson slowly shook his head. "It wouldn't work. The person--isn't that
kind of person."

"Why, but see here," St. John urged. "There must be something in the
fellow that you can appeal to. If you went and told him how it was
playing the very deuce with me pecuniarily, he would see the necessity of
letting you deny it, and taking the consequences, if he was anything of a
man at all."

"He isn't anything of a man at all," said Hewson, in mechanical and
melancholy parody.

"Then in Heaven's name what is he?" demanded St. John, savagely.

"A woman." "Oh!" St. John fell back in his chair. But he pulled himself
up again with a sudden renewal of hope. "Why, see here! If she's the
right kind of woman, she'll enjoy denying the story, and putting the
people in the wrong that have circulated it!"

Hewson shook his head in rejection of the general principle, while, as to
the particular instance, he could only say: "She isn't that kind. She's