"It is not persecution, Anna," he answered gently. "Only you are the woman I love, and you are in trouble. And you are something of a heroine, too. You see, my riddle is solved. I know all." "You know all?" "Your sister has told me." "You have seen her--since last night?" "Yes." Anna shivered a little. She asked no further questions for the moment. Ennison himself, with the recollection of Annabel's visit still fresh in his mind, was for a moment constrained and ill at ease. When they reached her rooms she stepped lightly out upon the pavement. "Now you must go," she said firmly. "I have had a trying evening and I need rest." "You need help and sympathy more, Anna," he pleaded, "and I have the right, yes I have the right to offer you both. I will not be sent away." "It is my wish to be alone," she said wearily. "I can say no more." She turned and fitted the latchkey into the door. He hesitated for a moment and then he followed her. She turned the gas up in her little sitting-room, and sank wearily into an easy chair. On the mantelpiece in front of her was a note addressed to her in Annabel's handwriting. She looked at it with a little shudder, but she made no motion to take it. "Will you say what you have to say, please, and go. I am tired, and I want to be alone." He came and stood on the hearthrug close to her. "Anna," he said, "you make it all indescribably hard for me. Will you not remember what has passed between us? I have the right to take my place by your side." "You have no right at all," she answered. "Further than that, I am amazed that you should dare to allude to those few moments, to that single moment of folly. If ever I could bring myself to ask you any favour, I would ask you to forget even as I have forgotten." "Why in Heaven's name should I forget?" he cried. "I love you, Anna, and I want you for my wife. There is nothing but your pride which stands between us." "There is great deal more," she answered coldly. "For one thing I am going to marry David Courtlaw." He stepped back as though he had received a blow. "It is not possible," he exclaimed. "Why not?" "Because you are mine. You have told me that you cared. Oh, you cannot escape from it. Anna, my love, you cannot have forgotten so soon." He fancied that she was yielding, but her eyes fell once more upon that fatal envelope, and her tone when she spoke was colder than ever. "That was a moment of madness," she said. "I was lonely. I did not know what I was saying." "I will have your reason for this," he said. "I will have your true reason." She looked at him for a moment with fire in her eyes. "You need a reason. Ask your own conscience. What sort of a standard of life yours may be I do not know, yet in your heart you know very well that every word you have spoken to me has been a veiled insult, every time you have come into my presence has been an outrage. That is what stands between us, if you would know--that."