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 reality it had made no difference to the Big Financier, who knew his man and, with wide-open eyes, did what he had done.
Virginie was not subtle.

She did not understand, was never satisfied with allusions, and she had no gift for catching the drift of things.
She could endure no peradventure in her conversation.

She wanted plain speaking and to be literally sure.
"Are you going to take it ?" she asked abruptly.
He could not bear to be checked in his course.

He waved a hand and smiled at her.

Then his eyes seemed to travel away into the distance, the look of the dreamer in them; but behind all was that strange, ruddy underglow of revelation which kept emerging from shadows, retreating and emerging, yet always there now, in much or in little, since the burning of the mill.
"I've lent a good deal of money without security in my time," he reflected, "but the only people who ever paid me back were a deaf and dumb man and a flyaway--a woman that was tired of selling herself, and started straight and right with the money I lent her.