“But you just said that you invited me here to talk frankly.” “No, I don't love him.” “Then why, in heaven's name, are you going to marry him?” She lay back in her chair, regarding me, her lips slightly parted. All at once the full flavour of her, the superfine quality was revealed after years of blindness.--Nor can I describe the sudden rebellion, the revulsion that I experienced. Hambleton Durrett! It was an outrage, a sacrilege! I got up, and put my hand on the mantel. Nancy remained motionless, inert, her head lying back against the chair. Could it be that she were enjoying my discomfiture? There is no need to confess that I knew next to nothing of women; had I been less excited, I might have made the discovery that I still regarded them sentimentally. Certain romantic axioms concerning them, garnered from Victorian literature, passed current in my mind for wisdom; and one of these declared that they were prone to remain true to an early love. Did Nancy still care for me? The query, coming as it did on top of my emotion, brought with it a strange and overwhelming perplexity. Did I really care for her? The many years during which I had practised the habit of caution began to exert an inhibiting pressure. Here was a situation, an opportunity suddenly thrust upon me which might never return, and which I was utterly unprepared to meet. Would I be happy with Nancy, after all? Her expression was still enigmatic. “Why shouldn't I marry him?” she demanded. “Because he's not good enough for you.” “Good!” she exclaimed, and laughed. “He loves me. He wants me without reservation or calculation.” There was a sting in this. “And is he any worse,” she asked slowly, “than many others who might be mentioned?” “No,” I agreed. I did not intend to be led into the thankless and disagreeable position of condemning Hambleton Durrett. “But why have you waited all these years if you did not mean to marry a man of ability, a man who has made something of himself?” “A man like you, Hugh?” she said gently. I flushed. “That isn't quite fair, Nancy.” “What are you working for?” she suddenly inquired, straightening up. “What any man works for, I suppose.” “Ah, there you have hit it,--what any man works for in our world. Power,--personal power. You want to be somebody,--isn't that it? Not the noblest ambition, you'll have to admit,--not the kind of thing we used to dream about, when we did dream. Well, when we find we can't realize our dreams, we take the next best thing. And I fail to see why you should blame me for taking it when you yourself have taken it. Hambleton Durrett can give it to me. He'll accept me on my own terms, he won't interfere with me, I shan't be disillusionized,--and I shall have a position which I could not hope to have if I remained unmarried, a very marked position as Hambleton Durrett's wife. I am thirty, you know.” Her frankness appalled me.