"You will deny, of course," says he mercilessly. "You would even have me believe that you regret the past--but you, and such as you never regret. Man is your prey! So many scalps to your belt is all you think about. Why," with an accent of passion, "what am I to you? Just the filling up of so many hours' amusement--no more! Do you think all my eloquence would have any chance against one of his cursed words? I might kneel at your feet from morning until night, and still I should be to you a thing of naught in comparison with him." She holds out her hands to him in a little dumb fashion. Her tongue seems frozen. But he repulses this last attempt at reconciliation. "It is no good. None! I have no belief in you left, so you can no longer cajole me. I know that I am nothing to you. Nothing! If," drawing a deep breath through his closed teeth, "if a thousand years were to go by I should still be nothing to you if he were near. I give it up. The battle was too strong for me. I am defeated, lost, ruined." "You have so arranged it," says she in a low tone, singularly clear. The violence of his agitation had subdued hers, and rendered her comparatively calm. "You must permit me to contradict you. The arrangement is all your own." "Was it so great a crime to stay last night at Falling?" "There is no crime anywhere. That you should have made a decision between two men is not a crime." "No! I acknowledge I made a decision--but----" "When did you make it?" "Last evening--and though you----" "Oh! no excuses," says he with a frown. "Do you think I desire them?" He hesitates for a minute or so, and now turns to her abruptly. "Are you engaged to him finally?" "No." "No!" In accents suggestive of surprise so intense as to almost enlarge into disbelief. "You refused him then?" "No," says she again. Her heart seems to die within her. Oh, the sense of shame that overpowers her. A sudden wild, terrible hatred of Beauclerk takes her into possession. Why, why, had he not given her the choice of saying yes, instead of no, to that last searching question? "You mean--that he----" He stops dead short as if not knowing how to proceed. Then, suddenly, his wrath breaks forth. "And for that scoundrel, that fellow without a heart, you have sacrificed the best of you--your own heart! For him, whose word is as light as his oath, you have flung behind you a love that would have surrounded you to your dying day. Good heavens! What are women made of? But----" He sobers himself at once, as if smitten by some sharp remembrance, and, pale with shame and remorse, looks at her. "Of course," says he, "it is only one heartbroken, as I am, who would have dared thus to address you. And it is plain to me now that there are reasons why he should not have spoken before this. For one thing, you were alone with him; for another, you are tired, exhausted. No doubt to-morrow he----"