May stood silent and trembling. She was not insensible to the compliment Copley was paying her. She knew that he meant every word he said, and she knew, too, that there must be a hard fight before she could convince him that the thing he so ardently desired was impossible. She had an uneasy feeling, too, that Copley had not yet played all his cards. "I ought to thank you, I suppose," she said. "In a sense you are doing me an honour, and this is the first time that any man has asked me such a question, and naturally I feel disturbed. But what you ask of me is quite impossible." "Why impossible?" Copley asked grimly. "Oh, I didn't expect you to jump at me; I know you are not that sort of girl. Perhaps that is one of the main reasons why I am so anxious to make you my wife. But if there is no one else----" "There is no one else," May said with a sorrowful sincerity which was not lost upon her companion. "There is no one else, and there never will be. If it is any sort of consolation to you, Mr. Copley, I shall never marry." "Never is a long day," Copley smiled. "At any rate, as long as there is nobody else in question I shall feel encouraged to go on. I am a very persistent man, and in the end I always get my own way. I'll ask you again in a week or two, and, perhaps, when you have had time to think it over----" "No, no," May said firmly. "There must be no thinking it over. I could not marry you. I could not care for you enough for that and I would never marry a man to whom I could not give myself wholly and entirely. It is the same to-day, it will be the same next year. Mr. Copley, I ask you not to allude to this distressing topic again. If you do, I shall have no alternative but to treat you as a stranger." There was no mistaking the sincerity of May's words. Her natural courage and resolution had come back to her. She met Copley's glance without flinching. Her little mouth was firmly set. Even Copley, with all his egotism and assurance, knew that the last words had been said. A sudden blind rage clutched him. His thin veneer of gentility vanished. He stretched out a hand and laid it upon the girl's arm. "So you mean to defy me," he said hoarsely. "Defy you!" May cried, indignantly. "What do you mean? Have you forgotten that you are a gentleman? Anybody would think to look at you and hear you speak that you were playing the villain in some sensational melodrama. You have paid me the compliment of asking me to be your wife, and I have done my best to decline in such a manner as to give you as little pain as possible. You will be good enough to take me back to the billiard-room and not to allude to this matter again."