"Security? I don't understand about that," she replied. "I'd not offer
you the money if I didn't think you were an honest man, and an honest man
would pay me back. A dishonest man wouldn't pay me back, security or no
security."

"He'd have to pay you back if the security was right to start with," Jean
Jacques insisted. "But you don't want security, because you think I'm an
honest man! Well, for sure you're right. I am honest. I never took a
cent that wasn't mine; but that's not everything. If you lend you ought
to have security. I've lost a good deal from not having enough security
at the start. You are willing to lend me money without security--that's
enough to make me feel thirty again, and I'm fifty--I'm fifty," he added,
as though with an attempt to show her that she could not think of him in
any emotional way; though the day when his flour-mill was burned he had
felt the touch of her fingers comforting and thrilling.

"You think Jean Jacques Barbille's word as good as his bond?" he
continued. "So it is; but I'm going to pull this thing through alone.
That's what I said to you and Maitre Fille at his office. I meant it too
--help of God, it is the truth!"

He had forgotten that if M. Mornay had not made it easy for him, and had
not refrained from insisting on his pound of flesh, he would now be
insolvent and with no roof over him. Like many another man Jean Jacques
was the occasional slave of formula, and also the victim of phases of his
own temperament. In truth he had not realized how big a thing M. Mornay
had done for him. He had accepted the chance given him as the tribute to
his own courage and enterprise and integrity, and as though it was to the
advantage of his greatest creditor to give him another start; though in