“Vincent, have pity on me! You can’t, you won’t, do this! I will kneel at your feet till you promise me to break it off. I can’t bear it! Vincent, I can’t bear it! It will drive me mad if you are married. I can’t live; I shall kill myself! You don’t know what my life has been since we ceased to meet; I couldn’t have lived if I hadn’t had a sort of hope that--oh, I know it’s all my own fault; I said and did things I never should have done; you are blameless. But you _cannot_ marry another woman when you--I mean, not at once, not so soon! It isn’t three months, not three months, since you said you liked me better than any one else you had ever met. Can’t you be sorry for me a little? Look at me--I haven’t even the pride a woman ought to have; I am on my knees to you. Put it off a little while; let me see if I can get to bear it!” She had caught and held the hand with which he had endeavoured to raise her. The man was in desperate straits; his face was a picture of passionate torment, the veins at his temple blue and swollen, his lips dry and quivering. With an effort of all his strength he raised her bodily, and almost flung her upon the sofa, where she lay with half-closed eyes, pallid, semi-conscious. “Lie there till you are quiet,” he said with a brutality which was the result of his inner struggle, and not at all an utterance of his real self, “and then go home. I am going out.” He went into an inner room, and reappeared in a moment equipped for walking. Rhoda had risen, and was before him at the door, standing with her face turned from him. “Wait till I have been gone a minute,” she said. “Forgive me; I will never come again.” “Where are you going?” he inquired abruptly. “Home.” A sudden, violent double-knock at the door made them both start. “It’s only the postman,” Lacour explained. The interruption had been of good effect, relieving the overcharged atmosphere. “Listen to me for one moment before you go,” he continued. “You must see perfectly well that you ask what is impossible. Mistake or not, right or wrong, I cannot undo what I have done; we must consider other people as well as ourselves. For all that, we are not going to part in an unfriendly way. I am sensitive; I could not be at my ease; I think you owe it to me to restore our relations to their former reasonable state.” “I will try,” came from the girl in a whisper. “But I must have your promise. You will go home to your father and sister, and will live as you have been doing.” “Do you know how that has been?” she murmured. “In future it must be different,” he urged vehemently. “Cannot you see that by being unhappy you reproach me?” “I do not reproach you, but I cannot help my unhappiness.” “But you _must_ help it,” he cried half-angrily. “I will not have that laid to my account. You must overcome all such weakness. The feeling you profess for me is unreal if you are not capable of so small an effort on my behalf. Surely you see that?” “I will try.”