“But I ought not to blame you,” he goes on; “after all, class should mate with class, and I am not good enough for you--nor rich enough. I have plenty of shortcomings, I know, Zai, but you must not think worse of me than I deserve.” Her heart flutters like a bird at this, and her eyes glisten through unshed but irrepressible tears. “Worse of you than you deserve, Carl!” she falters, while her arm clings closer to his neck, and she feels that this man is a king among his kind, and that she may well be forgiven if she worships him. “Why should you imagine that I think any ill of you?” “Because I merit it after the brutal way I treated you at the Meredyths’, and even in the beginning of this evening, my Zai. I doubted you, you see, and when one suffers one is apt to be unreasonable, and wounded vanity is quick to come to the side of wounded love, and after all what is more natural than that you should not love me?” he asks, but clasping her even closer and kissing the bright chesnut hair that gleams up so ruddy under the moonbeams. “What more natural than that you should love--Delaval!” But in his heart he does not for a moment believe that she or any other woman could pause between any other man and _him_. “Nothing more natural, I suppose,” Zai answers, nestling her hand into his, and feeling her spirits rise and her courage rear its crest aloft as she thinks Carl has only acted thus out of jealousy. “But natural things do not always come to pass, do they? There are exceptions to all rules, you know. I told you before, Carl, that I was the exception to the rule in the Beranger family of being dazzled by Lord Delaval’s fascinations. Have you forgotten this?” “I thought _you_ had forgotten it!” Carlton Conway murmurs in his most melodious and reproachful accents. “Why should you have thought so?” she asks wistfully. “It would be wiser to ask why I should have thought otherwise,” he returns, a little drily. “Your sweet face has bewitched me until I have had no sense left I think, but still I am not _quite_ mad. I know my superiors, and am not surprised when fate and fortune compel me to bow to them.” “But Lord Delaval is _not_ your superior, Carl!” she cries earnestly, “not in any respect--except that he is a little richer, perhaps.” “I did not mean to imply that he is my superior because he is a swell,” he observes rather haughtily, “but the very point of which you speak is the very one that makes his superiority, probably, in _your_ eyes.” “In my eyes!” she answers in amazement. “Oh, Carl, I am sorry you should give me credit for such things. I don’t think that kind of superiority worth anything--_anything_!” she goes on scornfully. “I don’t think that money and position and all that sort of thing makes people really happy!” “Everyone in Town thinks you mean to make the experiment, anyhow!” he replies.