Nora’s lips parted as though in an impulsive answer, then closed again, and for a moment she sat silent, with her eyes fixed full on her interlocutor’s face. The time had surely come to give her explanation, to appeal to the other’s pity and sympathy for what had, after all, been no more than an act of youthful folly—even generous in its impulse. But she could say nothing. The stern, cold face froze her in a prison of ice, and she could do no more than answer in a reckless affirmative. "Yes; it was perfectly true." "Do you think your conduct was honourable, or fair to Wolff? Have you no explanation to offer?" Nora rose to her feet. She was white with anger and indignation. "None that I need offer you, Frau von Arnim," she said. Unconsciously she had reverted to the old formal title, and in her blind sense of injury and injustice she did not see the spasm of pain which passed over the elder woman’s face. Frau von Arnim also rose. She appeared calm almost to the point of indifference, but in reality her whole strength was concentrated on the suppression of her own emotion, and for once in a way the generous-minded, broad-hearted woman saw and understood nothing but herself. "You force me to speak openly, Nora," she said. "I must point out to you that you have done something which in our eyes is nearly unpardonable. An engagement is almost as binding as a marriage and until it is dissolved no honourable woman or man has the right to enter into another alliance. But that is what you did; and whether you have an explanation to offer or not, makes, after all, no difference. What is done cannot be undone. But you are now no longer the Miss Ingestre who was free to act as she chose in such matters. You are my nephew’s wife, and you bear our name and the responsibility which it implies. Whatsoever you do reflects itself for good or evil upon him and upon us all. Therefore we have the right to control your conduct and to make this demand—that you keep our name from scandal. That you have not done. From every quarter I hear the same warnings, the same insinuations. It is not only Captain Arnold who has caused them—I alone know the worst—it is your friendship with people outside our circle, your neglect of those to whom you are at least bound by duty, if not by affection. Before it goes too far to be mended, I ask—I demand that your intimacy with these people and with this Captain Arnold should cease." "Captain Arnold is my friend," Nora exclaimed. "The only friend I have." Had Frau von Arnim been less self-absorbed that one sentence might have opened her eyes and shown her a pitiful figure enough, overburdened with trouble and loneliness. But Nora’s head was thrown back, and the defiant attitude blinded the other to the tears that were gathered in the stormy, miserable eyes.