"There is no need to be afraid, Alice. I have never made myself disagreeable to you yet, and I am not likely to begin now, when I have come to ask you plainly whether you could be happy with me? Could you?" She clasped and unclasped her hands quite nervously. "I am ready to try--if you like--if you think I ought to." "That has nothing to do with it. Put me out of the question, please. Of course, it is always painful for a man to know that a woman does not care for him sufficiently----" "It is not that," she broke in hurriedly. "I would not have promised if I had not liked you--it is the dulness, and the poverty. I have never been accustomed to it, and I might not be contented, and then how could I be a good wife if I were not happy? It is not as if there would be distractions, but there would be none, and I don't like the country as some girls do--Marjory Carmichael, for instance." He looked at her sharply, but her eyes met his without any hidden meaning in them. "She would not be dull, but I should, and then how could I cheer you up? For you need cheering at Gleneira--you know you do." The truth irritated him. "From which I infer that you would rather be free. Well! you have only to take me or leave me," he said curtly. She caught in her breath, and, as usual, the display of temper made her piteous. "Don't be angry, Paul! There is nothing to be angry about. If you wish it, I will try; but we can always be friends, and if it is wiser to part, then it is wiser." "That is for you to decide. I am at your orders." He stood there looking very handsome, and she gave a sigh of indecision, though a certain resentment at being, as it were, thrust into the breach, came to her aid. "Do you think it wiser?" he repeated. "How can I tell? All I want to do is my duty, and I am afraid----" "If you are afraid, that is enough," he said, losing patience. "Good-bye, Alice; if you had decided otherwise I would have tried to be a good husband to you." A faint flush came to her cheek. "And I would have tried to be a good wife; but----" "Well?" "Don't you think that with you trying to be a good husband and I trying to be a good wife, life would have been a little dreary--sometimes?" The curse of home truths seemed in the air, and Paul felt he had no answer ready, and yet he liked her the better for the first touch of sarcasm he had ever heard from her lips. It reminded him of Mrs. Vane.