"My dear Paul, sooner or later it must come to this. Even were there no other reasons, it would be impossible for me to accept an offer of marriage which it might be truly said I have literally wrung from you. If you love me very much--there, you need not protest; we will allow that to pass, and take it for granted that you do--you are desperately spooney upon me, as the phrase is, Paul; but how long will you continue in that state? and when the first force of your passion is spent and past, you will find yourself tied to a wife who, as you will not fail to say to yourself--you don't think so now, but there is no doubt about it--insisted on your marrying her." "I should not have been cad enough to think any such thing!" cried Paul. "You would always be too much of a gentleman to say it, I know," said Daisy, "but you could not help thinking it; and the mere knowledge that you thought it would distress me beyond measure. No, Paul, it would not do; depend upon it, it would not do." "Do you mean to tell me, then," said Paul, in a trembling voice, "that you have finally decided in this matter?" "I have." "And your decision is----" "That it will be better for us to say goodbye, and part as friends." "And you--you will not marry me, Daisy?" "Under the circumstances I cannot, Paul. What I might have done, had the proposal been made at a different time and in a different way, I cannot tell; but coming as it has, it is impossible." "And do you think I am weak enough not to see through all this?" cried Paul furiously. "Do you think I am so slow of hearing or so uninterested in what you say that I did not catch the words, 'even if there were not other reasons,' when you first began to explain why you could not accept my offer; and do you think it is not palpable to me at once what those 'other reasons' are? You have been playing the false during my absence; your woman's vanity is so great that, knowing me as you do, being fully aware of the love, passion, call it what you will, that I had for you, you couldn't even remain content with that during the few weeks I was away, but must get some fresh admirer to minister to it!" "Paul--Mr. Douglas!" cried Daisy. "I will speak--I will be heard! This is the last chance I shall have, and I will avail myself of it. You have wrecked my life and destroyed all my hopes, and yet you think that I am to make no protest against all that you have done! All the time that I was away I was wearing you in my heart, checking off with delight the death of each day which brought nearer the hour of my return to you; and now I have returned to find you sneer at those relations between us which made me so happy, and bidding me be practical, rational; bidding me, in point of fact, though not in words, abjure all my love and give you up contentedly, see you go to someone else. It is too hard, it is too hard, Daisy! You cannot force this upon me." He seized her hand and looked imploringly into her eyes.