"Lord Hemsworth," said Di, "have I ever given you any encouragement?" "None," he replied. "People might think you had, but you never did. I knew better. I never misunderstood you. I know you don't care a straw about me; but--oh, Di, you have not your equal in the world. There's no woman to compare with you. I don't see how you could care for any one like me. Of course you don't. I would not expect it. But if--if you would only marry me--I would be content with very little. I've looked at it all round. I would be content with--very little." There was a long silence. What woman whose love has been slighted can easily reject a great devotion? "I think," said Di, after several false starts to speak, "that if I only considered myself I would marry you; but there is the happiness of one other person to think of--_yours_." "I can't have any apart from you." "You would have none with me. If it is miserable to care for any one who is indifferent, it would be a thousand times more miserable to be married to that person." "Not if it were you." "Yes, if it were I." "I would take the risk," said Lord Hemsworth, who held, in common with most men, the rooted conviction that a woman will become attached to any husband, however little she cares for her lover. It is precisely this conviction which makes the average marriages of the present day such mediocre affairs; which serves to place worldly or facile women, or those whose affections have never been called out, at the head of so many homes; as the mothers of the new generation from which we hope so much. "I would take any risk," repeated Lord Hemsworth, doggedly. "I would rather be unhappy with you than happy with any one else." "You think so now," said Di; "but the time would come when you would see that I had cut you off from the best thing in the world--from the love of a woman who would care for you as much as you do for me." "I don't want her. I want you." "I cannot marry you." Lord Hemsworth clutched blindly at the arms of the chair. "I would wait any time." Di shook her head. "Any time," he stammered. "Go away for a year, and--come back." "It would be no good." Then he lost his head. "So long as you don't care for any one else," he said incoherently. "I thought at the carnival--that is why I have kept out of the way--but I met Tempest to-day at the Carlton, and--I asked him straight out, and he said there was nothing between you and him. I suppose you have refused him, like the rest of us. Oh, my God, Di, they say you have no heart! But it isn't true, is it? Don't refuse me. Don't make me live without you. I've tried for three months"--and Lord Hemsworth's face worked--"and if you knew what it was like, you wouldn't send me back to it." Every vestige of colour had faded from Di's face at the mention of John. "I don't care enough for you to marry you," she said, pitiless in her great pity. "I wish I did, but--I don't." "Do you care for any one else?"