She stopped short and confronted him. The moon, breaking through the driving clouds, shone full on her face. Beautiful, corpse-like in its sombre, set expression, there was that in her great, shining eyes which gave him, hardened worldling though he was, a slight shock. He felt he had gone too far. "Drop the tragedy queen, do, and be my own little darling once more!" he wheedled, and would have embraced her, but she slid away as he approached. "Listen!" she began, in clear, determined tones, in which there was neither fear nor hesitation, "unless you treat me with consideration, decency, respect--unless you can give me time to arrange matters so that to avow myself your--wife--will not ruin me, body and soul, I swear before God that I will put a barrier between myself and you which will separate us for ever." "Pah, pah, pah, spitfire!" he sarcastically said, swinging his umbrella and beginning to walk onward. "I know what you mean! You have some romantic idea of suicide. You are not the kind of girl who kills herself, I can tell you that--so that threat won’t hold water with me. Come now, don’t let us waste time quarrelling. What do you propose to do? Before I tell you my ideas, let’s hear yours. _Place aux dames_ was always my motto." During her long vigil, scheme after scheme of escaping him and of belonging irrevocably to Vansittart, one plan wilder than another, had agitated her mind. She had at last arrived at one set conclusion--Victor Mercier must be cajoled into giving her time. Events would decide the rest. "All I ask of you is to wait," she pleaded earnestly, vehemently. "Give me time to find some way of introducing you to friends, and through them to uncle and aunt--then I can begin seeming to encourage you, and feel my way----" He burst into a derisive laugh.