“We have not been taken away to a madhouse; we have not gone on the drink; we have not got double pneumonia; but it is to _us_ that this last casualty has happened!” She stands before him disarmed, her poor toy weapons knocked out of her shaking hand; yet she essays one more feeble parry with her helpless buttoned foil. “We don’t seem much the worse for it, whatever it is,” she answers, trying to laugh. “Don’t we? I think you can’t have looked in the glass lately.” She puts up her hand with a gesture of futile anger to her face, as if to chastise it for its blabbing treachery; but speech has gone from her. “I do not want you to tell me anything about it,” Rupert says in a steady voice. “It could not be pleasant for you, and it would do me no good. I wished to bring you out--not on the high-road; that was your own precautionary measure”--with a faint stinging touch of sarcasm--“but out of possible eye and earshot, to consult with you.” She turns her woeful eyes, in a deep humiliation of asking upon him; but words are still denied her. “To consult you as to how we are to get ourselves out of this _impasse_.” Once again her dumb look seeks to penetrate his meaning. “It would be perfectly simple if it were only we two; we might settle it between ourselves. It is, of course, my father who complicates it.” The voice is still even and quiet, but its matter-of-fact composure affects her far more than any raving denunciation could do. What does it take for granted? And why? She must speak, must protest, must find out how much he knows. “You are implying that you wish our engagement to end? Have you--any--any reason for it?” “_Haven’t_ I?” The question thus returned upon her would strike her once more dumb, if she did not wrench a faint retort out of herself. “You--you know your own feelings best.” “And _yours_?” Oh, if he would choose any other weapon of torture--any reviling, any accusation, any sneer, any reproach, anything but these questions that, terrible in their brevity, seem to lay her helpless soul even more naked before him than his lifelong habit of divining her, joined to who knows what added knowledge have already done. “I had--I have no intention of breaking it!” “I am quite”--“in the dark as to what you mean,” she would have added, but the superfluous lie dies unborn. “You meant to marry me--_still_?” Then she touches the depth of her degradation; hearing the anguish of an incredulity that is yet belief in her confession of such an intended treason against him pierce through his self-control. “Did I quite deserve _that_?” Her wretched head drops on her breast, and she stands at his mercy, attempting no further denial. But, as she has never in her life appealed to him in vain for help or sympathy, so, even now, the old habit is too strong for him.