“It is impossible!” she falters, with the sharp thrill in her soul echoing in her voice. “You are perfectly right, Carl, in all you have said, and I--I know it as well as you do. I have been reared under certain conditions and for certain ends, and perhaps I could not put them entirely aside. I am fit for nothing but Society, and Society would not recognise me if I was poor and struggling, so we should simply mar each other’s lives and render each other miserable. And, Carl,” she tries to speak calmly but the effort is terrible, “I could not bear poverty and neither can you, though----” She breaks down completely, large tears chase one another down her cheeks, but she dashes them away, wroth at herself for her weakness and want of pride. “Therefore we must not think of marrying, of course!” Another dead pause. Madam Diana sails along more brilliantly than before, this time with an enormous court of glittering stars around her. The cool night air passes quietly by, lifting up the chesnut tendrils of hair that stray on to Zai’s brow and fanning her poor hot temples. The time is flying by, and someone will be coming this way, but nevertheless Carlton Conway cannot end this interview without a few more words. “And you will of course let Lady Beranger persuade you into marrying Delaval?” he asks, jealously--angrily. Like the dog in the manger, he does not want the girl himself but he grudges her to another man. Jealousy is a passion that is often wonderfully independent of the passion of true love. Carl is very loth indeed that Lord Delaval, whom he has always hated, shall have this lovely piece of nature’s handiwork for his. “I don’t know,” Zai murmurs wearily. Then she calls up all the high spirit she has in her and says quietly--“After all, the matter might be worse--for Lord Delaval everyone says is charming, you know.” “But you care nothing for him, Zai! You care for _me_!” he exclaims passionately, with almost a mind to claim her sooner than she should pass out of his life in this manner. “I know--and yet----” “And yet you _may_ become Countess of Delaval?” “I may.” Upon this Carl releases her hand pettishly and subsides into silence. He is not of a nature to ponder deeply on social or any other kind of evils, but just now the sordidness of this strikes him very forcibly, and he wonders how such girls as the Berangers hold themselves even a degree better than the Circassian and Eastern females who sell themselves for filthy lucre. “Zai, tell me the honest truth. Do you care for Delaval the least bit in the world?” he asks earnestly, longing for her to deny the existence of any liking for his rival, to protest the enormous height and depth and width of her love for himself. “Not yet--but,” Zai adds slowly and meditatively, “if I marry him I shall do my best to care for him, and even if I didn’t--what of it? Do people in our world deem it necessary to care for the man or the woman whom they marry?”