He raised a deprecating hand. “Oh, don’t--_again_! The woman I had meant to....” Suddenly, to her surprise, she saw a glitter of moisture on his lower lids. He applied his handkerchief to them, and the waft of scent checked her momentary impulse of compunction. That Cologne water! It called up picture after picture with a hideous precision. “Well, it was worth it,” she murmured doggedly. Henry Prest restored his handkerchief to his pocket. He waited, glanced about the room, turned back to her. “If your decision is final--” “Oh, final!” He bowed. “There is one thing more--which I should have mentioned if you had ever given me the opportunity of seeing you after--after last New Year’s day. Something I preferred not to commit to writing--” “Yes?” she questioned indifferently. “Your husband, you are positively convinced, had no idea ... that day ...?” “None.” “Well, others, it appears, had.” He paused. “Mrs. Wesson saw us.” “So I supposed. I remember now that she went out of her way to cut me that evening at Mrs. Struthers’s.” “Exactly. And she was not the only person who saw us. If people had not been disarmed by your husband’s falling ill that very day you would have found yourself--ostracized.” She made no comment, and he pursued, with a last effort: “In your grief, your solitude, you haven’t yet realized what your future will be--how difficult. It is what I wished to guard you against--it was my purpose in asking you to marry me.” He drew himself up and smiled as if he were looking at his own reflection in a mirror, and thought favourably of it. “A man who has had the misfortune to compromise a woman is bound in honour--Even if my own inclination were not what it is, I should consider....” She turned to him with a softened smile. Yes, he had really brought himself to think that he was proposing to marry her to save her reputation. At this glimpse of the old hackneyed axioms on which he actually believed that his conduct was based, she felt anew her remoteness from the life he would have drawn her back to. “My poor Henry, don’t you see how far I’ve got beyond the Mrs. Wessons? If all New York wants to ostracize me, let it! I’ve had my day ... no woman has more than one. Why shouldn’t I have to pay for it? I’m ready.” “Good heavens!” he murmured. She was aware that he had put forth his last effort. The wound she had inflicted had gone to the most vital spot; she had prevented his being magnanimous, and the injury was unforgivable. He was glad, yes, actually glad now, to have her know that New York meant to cut her; but, strive as she might, she could not bring herself to care either for the fact, or for his secret pleasure in it. Her own secret pleasures were beyond New York’s reach and his. “I’m sorry,” she reiterated gently. He bowed, without trying to take her hand, and left the room.