‘There was no necessity for that appeal,’ he said coldly; ‘you can go—alone if you choose—though I should like to walk back to the hotel with you. I left—your sister’ (it seemed as if it were difficult for him to pronounce Lina’s name) ‘in the garden before I strolled up here. I thought you were with your devoted lover. You say to-morrow shall decide our fate. I cannot imagine why you should hesitate, or postpone your decision. I know that you love me as fondly as I love you, and that neither of us can ever care for anyone else. Promise me at least one thing before we part to-day. Promise me that you will break off this pitiful mockery of an engagement to a man whom you despise.’ ‘I do not despise him—that is too hard a word—but I promise that I will never be Edgar Turchill’s wife.’ ‘Lose no time in letting him know that. My blood boils and my heart sickens every time I see him touch your hand. Thank God, he keeps his kisses for your hours of privacy.’ ‘He has never kissed me but once in my life,’ said Daphne, tossing up her head, and blushing angrily. ‘Thank God again.’ ‘Good-bye,’ she said, looking at him with a pathetic tenderness, love struggling with despair. He leaned against the brown trunk of a fir-tree, pale to the lips, his eyes fixed on the ground, where the mosses and starry white blossoms, and tremulous harebells, and delicate maidenhair fern shone like jewels in the golden patches of light which flickered with every movement of the dark branches above them. His eyes perused every leaf and every petal, noting their form and colour with mechanical accuracy of observation. His pencil could have reproduced every detail of that little bit of broken ground six months afterwards. ‘Daphne,’ he said huskily, ‘you are very cruel to me. I am not going to let you see how low a man can sink when he loves a woman as weakly, as blindly, as madly as I love you. I am not going to show you how base he can be—how sunk in his own esteem. There is some remnant of pride left in me. I am not going to crawl at your feet, or to shed womanish tears. But I tell you all the same, you are breaking my heart.’ ‘It is all foolishness,’ said Daphne, pale, but calm of speech and eye, every nerve braced in the intensity of her resolution. ‘It is folly and madness from beginning to end. You confessed as much just this moment. Why should I sacrifice my honour and my self-respect to gratify a weak, blind, mad love? I love my sister with a truer, better, holier affection than I could ever feel for you—if I had been your wife five-and-twenty years, and it were our silver wedding-day.’ She smiled even in her despair at the impossible image of herself and Gerald Goring grown middle-aged and stout and commonplace, like the principal figures in a silver wedding. ‘Why cannot you let the past be past—forget that you ever have been so foolish, so false, as to care for me?’