There was the time, the place, the opportunity, and Olivia was more than half won. Yet, half an hour afterward, Pembroke came out of the garden, looking black as a thunder-cloud, and strode away down by the path through the fields--a rejected suitor. Olivia remained in the garden. The cool spring night came on apace. She could not have described her own emotions to have saved her life--or what exactly led up to that angry parting--for it will have been seen before this that Pembroke was subject to sudden gusts of temper. She had tried to put before him what she felt herself obliged in honor to say--that the Colonel’s modest fortune was very much exaggerated--and she had blundered wretchedly in so doing. Pembroke had rashly assumed that she meant his poverty stood in the way. Then he had as wretchedly blundered about Madame Koller, and a few cutting words on both sides had made it impossible for either to say more. Olivia, pale and red by turns, looked inexpressibly haughty when Madame Koller’s name was mentioned. Lovers’ quarrels are proverbially of easy arrangement--but the case is different when the woman is high strung and the man high tempered. Olivia received Pembroke’s confession with such cool questionings that his self-love was cruelly wounded. Pembroke took his dismissal so debonairly that Olivia was irresistibly impelled to make it stronger. The love scene, which really began very prettily, absolutely degenerated into a quarrel. Pembroke openly accused Olivia of being mercenary. Olivia retaliated by an exasperating remark, implying that perhaps Madame Koller’s fortune was not without its charm for him--to which Pembroke, being entirely innocent, responded with a rude violence that made Olivia more furiously angry than she ever expected to be in her life. Pembroke seeing this in her pale face and blazing eyes, stalked down the garden path, wroth with her and wroth with the whole world. He, walking fast back through the woods, was filled with rage and remorse--chiefly with rage. She was a cold-blooded creature--how she did weigh that money question--but--ah, she had a spirit of her own--such a spirit as a man might well feel proud to conquer--and the touch of her warm, soft hand!