Clifford stood up as though his intention was to leave. She also rose. His trifling strategy achieved its end--physical proximity and the chance which sitting at formal distance in chairs did not permit. Suddenly he gripped her two shoulder; and the energy and purpose and feeling which he had kept in restraint during the past minutes now burst forth. “Listen to me, Mary Regan,” he declared tensely. “You are not going to marry Jack Morton! You hear me!” She was so startled at the change in him that she was hardly aware of the hands clutching her shoulders. “Why not?” His words rushed out. “I’m not going to say anything about it’s not being square. He’s not good enough for you! Oh, I don’t mean to run down a man I’ve called my friend. Jack Morton is pleasant enough in his way. And you’ve seen him at his best--away from the lights and Big Pleasure, when he was on his good behavior--and there are few men who can be more agreeable than Jack Morton. But Broadway is likely to get hold of him again! And girls!--no girl is pretty to him for more than six months, and every pretty girl is prettier than the last pretty girl! It’s just the way Jack is made--or the way this town has made him. I tell you it’s an awful mistake!” “It’s my own mistake I’m making!” Her dark eyes flashed at him. “Take off your hands!” Instead he clutched her all the tighter. “There’s a bigger reason than the mistake. Mary, you love me!” “Love you!” she ejaculated. “Yes, you love me, and you know you love me!” he declared masterfully. The impulse was upon him to sweep her from her announced determination by dominating her with a swift power comprised of his own longing for her and her reawakened liking for him. “You know you love me, or why did you see Commissioner Thorne about me six months ago, and why did you to-day suggest to him that he again offer me the place of Chief of the Detective Bureau? You love me, and you thought your marriage to me might injure my public career. You don’t care how much marriage to Jack Morton may injure him. Don’t you think I see through you? Don’t you think I understand? You’re not going to marry Jack Morton! You’re going to marry me!” She had paled--and her dark eyes, of a brown that was almost a black, were fixed upon him widely, in what might have been fear, or bewilderment, or fascination, or all of these--and he felt a trembling go through her body. For a long moment they stood tensely thus: he hoping that he had carried the day--and at the same time poignantly wondering what she was about to say or do. “You are going to marry me! You are going to marry me!” he repeated after the manner of those who seek to work miracles by the power of a forcefully iterated idea. He felt her body grow taut; and the startled look of her face gave place to composed decision. That moment he knew that he had lost--for this day at least. “Please remove your hands!” she commanded in a quiet, edged voice.