“Nonsense!” said I. “What do you mean by 'we'? Nature has been bringing us up for a thousand thousand years. A few years of silly false training doesn't undo her work. If you and he had cared for each other, you wouldn't be here, apologizing for his selfish vanity.” “No matter about him,” she cried impatiently, lifting her head haughtily. “The point is, I love him--and always shall. I warn you.” “And I take you at my own risk?” Her look answered “Yes!” “Well,”--and I took her hand--“then, we are engaged.” Her whole body grew tense, and her hand chilled as it lay in mine. “Don't--please don't,” I said gently. “I'm not so bad as all that. If you will be as generous with me as I shall be with you, neither of us will ever regret this.” There were tears on her cheeks as I slowly released her hand. “I shall ask nothing of you that you are not ready freely to give,” I said. Impulsively she stood and put out her hand, and the eyes she lifted to mine were shining and friendly. I caught her in my arms and kissed her--not once but many times. And it was not until the chill of her ice-like face had cooled me that I released her, drew back red and ashamed and stammering apologies. But her impulse of friendliness had been killed; she once more, as I saw only too plainly, felt for me that sense of repulsion, felt for herself that sense of self-degradation. “I _can not_ marry you!” she muttered. “You can--and will--and must,” I cried, infuriated by her look. There was a long silence. I could easily guess what was being fought out in her mind. At last she slowly drew herself up. “I can not refuse,” she said, and her eyes sparkled with defiance that had hate in it. “You have the power to compel me. Use it, like the brute you refuse to let me forget that you are.” She looked so young, so beautiful, so angry--and so tempting. “So I shall!” I answered. “Children have to be taught what is good for them. Call in your mother, and we'll tell her the news.” Instead, she went into the next room. I followed, saw Mrs. Ellersly seated at the tea-table in the corner farthest from the library where her daughter and I had been negotiating. She was reading a letter, holding her lorgnon up to her painted eyes. “Won't you give us tea, mother?” said Anita, on her surface not a trace of the cyclone that must still have been raging hi her. “Congratulate me, Mrs. Ellersly,” said I. “Your daughter has consented to marry me.” Instead of speaking, Mrs. Ellersly began to cry--real tears. And for a moment I thought there was a real heart inside of her somewhere. But when she spoke, that delusion vanished. “You must forgive me, Mr. Blacklock,” she said in her hard, smooth, politic voice. “It is the shock of realizing I'm about to lose my daughter.” And I knew that her tears were from joy and relief--Anita had “come up to the scratch;” the hideous menace of “genteel poverty” had been averted.