"How little that amounts to! All human beings--Grant, you, I, all of us, everybody--are brimful of vanity. It slops over a little one way and we call it like. It slops over the other way and we call it dislike--hate--loathing--according to the size of the slop. Now, I'm not here to deal with vanity, but with good sense. Has it occurred to you in the last few days that you and I have got to get married, whether we will or no?" "It has not," she cried with frantic fury of human being cornered by an ugly truth. "Oh, yes, it has. For you are a sensible woman--entirely too sensible for a woman, unless she marries an unusual man like me." "Is that a jest?" she inquired in feeble attempt at sarcasm. "Don't you know I have no sense of humor? Would I do the things I do and carry them through if I had?" In spite of herself she admired this penetration of self-analysis. In spite of herself the personality beneath his surface, the personality that had a certain uncanny charm for her, was subtly reasserting its inexplicable fascination. "Yes, we've got to marry," proceeded he. "I have to marry you because I can't afford to let you say you jilted me. That would make me the laughing-stock of my State; and I can't afford to tell the truth that I jilted you because the people would despise me as no gentleman. And, while I don't in the least mind being despised as no gentleman by fashionable noddle-heads or by those I trample on to rise, I do mind it when it would ruin me with the people." Her eyes gleamed. So! She had him at her mercy! "Not so fast, young lady," continued he in answer to that gleam. "It is equally true that you've got to marry me." "But I shall not!" she cried. "Besides, it isn't true." "It IS true," replied he. "You may refuse to marry me, just as a man may refuse to run when the dynamite blast is going off. Yes, you can refuse, but--you'd not be your grandmother's granddaughter if you did." "Really!" She was so surcharged with rage that she was shaking with it, was tearing up her handkerchief in her lap. "Yes, indeed," he assured her, tranquil as a lawyer arguing a commercial case before a logic-machine of a judge. "If you do not marry me all your friends will say I jilted you. I needn't tell you what it would mean in your set, what it would mean as to your matrimonial prospects, for you to have the reputation of having been turned down by me--need I?" She was silent; her head down, her lips compressed, her fingers fiercely interlaced with the ruins of her handkerchief. "It is necessary that you marry," said he summing up. "It is wisest and easiest to marry me, since I am willing. To refuse would be to inflict an irreparable injury upon yourself in order to justify a paltry whim for injuring me." She laughed harshly. "You are frank," said she.