A pause, and the question came from above her--her head still lying against his breast--with a trace of severity, or was it anxiety? "And have you?" "Not intentionally--not knowingly," Damaris said. "If that is so, is it not sufficient?" "No--because she implies that I have raised false hopes, and so entangled myself--and that I ought to go further, that, as I understand her, I ought to be ready to marry--that it is not quite honourable to withdraw." Charles Verity moved slightly, yet held her close. She felt the rise and fall of his ribs as he breathed slow and deep. "Do you want to marry?" he at last asked her. "No," she said, simply. "I'd much rather not, if I can keep out of it without acting unfairly by anyone--if you don't agree with Henrietta, and don't think I need. You don't want me to marry do you?" "God in heaven, no," Charles Verity answered. He put her from him, rose and moved about the room. "To me, the thought of giving you in marriage to any man is little short of abhorrent," he said hoarsely. For fear clutched him by the throat. The gift of pearls, the little scene of last night, and Damaris' emotion in bidding Carteret farewell, confronted him. The idea had never occurred to him before. Now it glared at him, or rather he glared at it. It would be torment to say "yes"; and yet very difficult to say his best friend "nay." Anger kindled against Henrietta Frayling. Must this be regarded as her handiwork? Yet he could hardly credit it. Or had she some other candidate--Peregrine Ditton, young Harry Ellice?--But they were mere boys.--Of Marshall Wace he never thought, the young man being altogether outside his field of vision in this connection. Long habit of personal chastity made Charles Verity turn, with a greater stabbing and rending of repulsion, from the thought of marriage for Damaris. She asserted she had no wish to marry, that she--bless her sweet simplicity!--would rather not. But this bare broaching of the subject threw him into so strange a tumult that, only too evidently, he was no competent observer, he laboured under too violent a prejudice. He had no right to demand from others the abstinence he chose himself to practise. Carteret, in desiring her, was within his rights. Damaris within hers, were she moved by his suit. Marriage is natural, wholesome, the God-ordained law and sanction of human increase since man first drew breath here upon earth. To condemn obedience to that law, by placing any parental embargo upon Damaris' marriage, would be both a defiance of nature and act of grossest selfishness.