He got up abruptly. "I must go," he said. "There are a hundred things I must--not do. I must go and not do them." At this moment, and for the first time during this interview, he had touched and moved her. His struggle suddenly became pathetic to her--a thing to pity and praise. Like a weir, he spouted at joints in the strong doors of his determination not to speak, but the flood was restrained. She rose also. "That excuse has the charm of absolute sincerity," she said. "When people say they have a hundred things to do, it seems to me a very bad reason. Yours is better. When shall I see you again?" "I don't know," said he, and for a moment left her awkwardly placed. But his manliness once more came to his aid--for there could be but one conclusion if he said no more--and he added: "I am away next Sunday; I come back on Wednesday. That night I dine with the Ardinglys." "I also. Till Wednesday, then, Jim--go and not do all these things you spoke of! Not doing things takes longer than doing them. It takes all the time, in fact. Good-bye!" CHAPTER IX It was never denied, even by the stupidest of her enemies, that Mildred Brereton was a woman of the world, and her mode of procedure, when she learned from Maud of her first rejection of Anthony's hand, was perfectly correct from the standpoint of wisdom. She made no fuss or scene of any kind, and only said: "Dear Maud, I am very, very sorry. But you know, dear, how I trust you." Maud pondered this remark, in her silent, uncomfortable way, for a moment. "Do you mean you trust me eventually to accept him?" she asked. Mrs. Brereton wondered in her own mind where Maud _could_ have got her tactlessness from. Aloud she said: "I trust you in every way, dear--every way. And it shows your good sense that you did not definitely refuse him. I do not wish to force you at all or hurry your decision." This was all that was said on the subject at the time, but Mildred, after careful thought, was convinced she had done right. This impeccable attitude was completed by her looking rather sad whenever her daughter was observing her, sighing, and constantly calling her "dear child" in well-modulated tones of chastened and uncomplaining affection. This policy--if it is possible to use so cold and calculating a word for a process so tender--had its desired effect, and Maud felt herself touched with a sense of vague contrition. Eventually, not feeling sure of herself, she had decided to confide her difficulty to Marie Alston, for whom she cherished a shy and secret adoration. This interview, however, had not been productive of a result which harmonized with her mother's tender processes; indeed, had Mildred known that her gentle dropping of water on a stone (the tender process) would have led her daughter to ask advice of Marie, she would have adopted quite different methods. Maud told her about the interview the same afternoon. She was not called "dear child," or words to that effect, on this occasion.