I

Capuchin returned to New Freedom moving the waters before him. He had in his pocket a blind draft on a New York bank for a sum fifty thousand dollars more than enough to buy the one important newspaper in the state. At the last moment he had had the inspiration to exaggerate the purchase price; afterward he justified it neatly on the ground that the excess was working capital. He meant to put it all in.

With him to New Freedom went Dwind, to write him a banking law, loaned for that purpose by the Lothian College, and Semicorn, to do what should turn out to be best.

On the train Capuchin talked a great deal, all the time in fact, and Dwind became irritated by it. He wished to be meditating.

“How long have you known Jael?” Capuchin asked him.

“Miss Saint-Leon?” said Dwind, in a tilted tone.

“I mean—” said Capuchin, his face slightly crumpled.

“I knew her in college,” said Dwind, leaving a proper interval for the other’s abashment.

But it was much easier to step on Capuchin than to get off. His secondary reactions were positive. Why shouldn’t he call her Jael? Why should others give themselves airs about taking that privilege? He had called her Jael at tea, and he had got more out of her at one stroke than Dwind had got in hit whole life. So he returned, saying:

“A very strange woman, Jael,” as if he had known her from childhood.

“Why do you say so?” Dwind asked.

“I was only thinking,” Capuchin replied, and said no more.

He had been thinking she was strange. It was about the draft. When he went in for tea the first thing she said was, “How much will that paper cost?” With great presence of wit he mentally added fifty thousand and named the whole figure.

“As a loan or as a gift?” she asked.

This was too unexpected.

“As a loan,” he said. “You might take a mortgage only, as the law is, that would have to be reported. I thought perhaps my note would do. Then nobody need know whose money it is.”

“Your note will do,” she said, and began to write the draft. As she handed it to him he said, “What if I had said as a gift?”

“I should have considered it,” she answered.

He held the draft, twisting and looking at it.

“Of course,” he said, “it would not have occurred to me—I mean, I was thinking only of a loan, but if—”

He could think of no way to say it that would not sound rather bald. She frowned while he hesitated, then smiled a little and said they would leave it as it was. And all the way back to Liberty he kept calling himself a fool and wondering at her hardness in that one moment. He almost told Dwind, wishing somebody’s opinion on what would have happened if he had said gift.