"It is a change in myself--I was too hasty--I reflected afterwards instead of before----" "Forgive me if I make the most of that admission. Your hastiness was certainly not my fault. I did not unduly press you; there was no importunity. Such being the case, don't you think I may suggest that you ought to bear the consequences? I can't--I really can't think them so dreadful." Irene kept silence, her face bent and averted. "Many a girl has gone through what you feel now, but I doubt whether ever one before acted like this. They kept their word; it was a point of honour." "I know; it is true." She forced herself to look at him. "And the result was lives of misery--dishonour--tragedies." "Oh, come now----" "You _dare_ not contradict me!" Her eyes flashed; she let her feeling have its way. "As a man of the world, you know the meaning of such marriages, and what they may, what they do often, come to. A girl hears of such facts--realises them too late. You smile. No, I don't want to talk for effect; it isn't my way. All I mean is that I, like so many girls who have never been in love, accepted an offer of marriage on the wrong grounds, and came to feel my mistake--who knows how?--not long after. What you are asking me to do, is to pay for the innocent error with my life. The price is too great. You speak of your feelings; they are not so strong as to justify such a demand--And there's another thought that surely must have entered your mind. Knowing that I feel it impossible to marry you, how can you still, with any shadow of self-respect, urge me to do so? Is your answer, again, fear of what people will say? That seems to me more than cowardice. How strange that an honourable man doesn't see it so!" Jacks abandoned his easy posture, sat straight, and fixed upon her a look of masculine disdain. "I simply don't believe in the impossibility of your becoming my wife." "Then talk is useless. I can only tell you the truth, and reclaim my liberty." "It's a question of time. You wouldn't--well, say you couldn't marry me to-morrow. A month hence you would be willing. Because you suffer from a passing illusion, I am to unsettle all my arrangements, and face an intolerable humiliation. The thing is impossible." With vast relief Irene heard him return upon this note, and strike it so violently. She felt no more compunction. The man was finally declared to her, and she could hold her own against him. Her headache had grown fierce; her mouth was dry; shudders of hot and cold ran through her. The struggle must end soon. "I am forgetting hospitality," she said, with sudden return to her ordinary voice. "You would like tea." Arnold waved his hand contemptuously. "No?--Then let us understand each other in the fewest possible words." "Good." He smiled, a smile which seemed to tighten every muscle of his face. "I decline to release you from your promise." She could meet his gaze, and did so as she answered with cold collectedness: