For a moment he did not venture upon a reply, and in that moment he was suddenly aware that she had caught his meaning from him--and that it was a horrible mistake. It was one of those instants of highly-charged exchanges of meanings whose revelation was as useless to be denied as powerless to be explained. Then her words came in tumultuous, passionate refutation of his thought. "That is what my father had come to tell me--that he had arranged my marriage. It is a very splendid thing. To a general--a rich general!" She had not meant to tell him like that! But for the moment she was savagely glad to hurl it at him. He made no answer. His eyes were inscrutably intent. A variety of things were rearranging themselves in his head. "You're--you're going to marry him?" he said slowly. "What else?" But she felt the phrase unfortunate and plunged past it. "It is not for me to say no, monsieur. It is for my father to arrange." "But his indulgence--? You were telling me, you know, that he was so fond of you. And that you were one of the moderns--the revolting moderns--" Jack Ryder's tone was questioningly cynical and its raillery cut through her brief sham of pride. "So I thought, too, last night." A tinge of infinite disillusionment was in her young voice. "But it is not so." "Then you accept--?" The shrouded head nodded. "But you can't want to," he broke out with sudden heat. "You don't know him at all, do you--this general?" "Know him? I have never seen his face nor heard his voice--and I would die first," she added with bitter, helpless fierceness under her breath. The veil muffled that from him. "But why--why?" he repeated in an angrily puzzled way. She made a little gesture of weary impotence. Out of the dark draperies her hands were like white fluttering butterflies. "What can I do?" "I should think you could do the Old Harry of a lot." "Weep?" said the girl with a pale irony not lost upon him. "Weep--or row. Or run," he added, almost reluctantly. She turned away her head. "I know, I thought once that I could run. For that I stole the key to this gate. But where would I run, monsieur? I have neither friends, nor--nor the resources.... There have been girls--two sisters--who ran away last year--but they were already married and they had cousins in France. For me, my cousins do not exist. I do not know my mother's family. They disowned her for her marriage, my father says. And so--but it is not possible to evade this.... It is not possible. This marriage is required." "Required--rot! Can't you--don't you--" he paused, looking down upon her in tremendous and serious uncertainty. The impulse was strong upon him to tell her that he would help her. The accents of her voice had seemed to tear at his very heart.