"O," cried Margaret, "you don't think I would compromise you, Lionel? You know me too well for that. You know too well how I always submitted to be kept in the background--only too happy to live on your smiles, to know that you were feted and made much of." "O, yes," said Lionel, simply; "you were always a deuced sensible little woman." "And I sha'n't be in the way, and I sha'n't bore you. They need know nothing of my existence, if you don't wish it, any more than they used. And we shall lead again the dear old life--eh, Lionel?" "Eh!" repeated he in rather a high key,--"the dear old life!" "Ah, how happy I was!" said Margaret. "You, whose intervening time has been passed in action, can scarcely imagine how I have looked back on those days,--how eagerly I have longed for the time to come when I might have them again." "Gad!" said he, "I don't exactly know about my time being passed in action. It's been horribly ghastly and melancholy, and deuced unpleasant, if you mean that." "Then we will both console ourselves for it now, Lionel, We will forget all the misery we have suffered, and--" "Y-es!" said he, interrupting her, swinging his leg a little more slowly, and looking quietly up into her face; "I don't exactly follow you in all this." "You don't follow me?" "N-no! I scarcely think we can be on the same tack, somehow." "In what way?" "In all this about leading again the old life, and living the days over again, and consoling ourselves, and that kind of thing." "You don't understand it?" "Well, I don't know about understanding it. All I mean to say is, I'm not going to have it." But for something in his tone, Margaret might not have entirely comprehended what he sought to convey in his words, so enraptured was she at seeing him again. But in his voice, in his look, there was a bravado that was unmistakable. She clasped her hands together in front of her; and her voice was very low and tremulous, as she said, "Lionel, what do you mean?" "What do I mean? Well, it's a devilish awkward thing to say--I can't conceive how it came about--all through your coming here, and that sort of thing; but it appears to me that, as I said before, you're on the wrong tack. You don't seem to see the position." "I don't indeed. For God's sake speak out!" "There, you see!--that's just it; like all women, taking the thing so much in earnest, and--" "So much in earnest? Is what would influence one's whole life a thing to be lightly discussed or laughed over? Is--" "There you are again! That's exactly what I complain of. What have I to do with influencing your life?" "All--every thing!" "I did not know it, then, by Jove,--that's all Ive got to say. You're best out of it, let me tell you. My influence is a deuced bad one, at least for myself."