"Just when I'm ready to marry you you write me the most nervous letters, as if you're going to back out, and I have to come rushing down here----" "You don't have to come if you don't want to." "But I _do_ want to!" insisted George. It seemed to him that he was being very cool and logical and that she was putting him deliberately in the wrong. With every word they were drawing farther and farther apart--and he was unable to stop himself or to keep worry and pain out of his voice. But in a minute Jonquil began to cry sorrowfully and he came back to the sofa and put his arm around her. He was the comforter now, drawing her head close to his shoulder, murmuring old familiar things until she grew calmer and only trembled a little, spasmodically, in his arms. For over an hour they sat there, while the evening pianos thumped their last cadences into the street outside. George did not move, or think, or hope, lulled into numbness by the premonition of disaster. The clock would tick on, past eleven, past twelve, and then Mrs. Cary would call down gently over the banister--beyond that he saw only to-morrow and despair. III In the heat of the next day the breaking-point came. They had each guessed the truth about the other, but of the two she was the more ready to admit the situation. "There's no use going on," she said miserably, "you know you hate the insurance business, and you'll never do well in it." "That's not it," he insisted stubbornly; "I hate going on alone. If you'll marry me and come with me and take a chance with me, I can make good at anything, but not while I'm worrying about you down here." She was silent a long time before she answered, not thinking--for she had seen the end--but only waiting, because she knew that every word would seem more cruel than the last. Finally she spoke: "George, I love you with all my heart, and I don't see how I can ever love any one else but you. If you'd been ready for me two months ago I'd have married you--now I can't because it doesn't seem to be the sensible thing." He made wild accusations--there was some one else--she was keeping something from him! "No, there's no one else." This was true. But reacting from the strain of this affair she had found relief in the company of young boys like Jerry Holt, who had the merit of meaning absolutely nothing in her life. George didn't take the situation well, at all. He seized her in his arms and tried literally to kiss her into marrying him at once. When this failed, he broke into a long monologue of self-pity, and ceased only when he saw that he was making himself despicable in her sight. He threatened to leave when he had no intention of leaving, and refused to go when she told him that, after all, it was best that he should. For a while she was sorry, then for another while she was merely kind. "You'd better go now," she cried at last, so loud that Mrs. Cary came down-stairs in alarm. "Is something the matter?"