"Still there are ways of conveying the truth--and of course I never professed to be anything very great and heroic----" He was decidedly hurt now. "Mr. Sheppard," she said, in a softer and more appealing tone, "I don't want to quarrel with you or with anybody, and please don't drive me on to make myself out any worse than I am. I don't care about you, and I never could. We never could get on together. I don't care for any man--I don't like men at all. I wouldn't marry you if you were an emperor. But I don't say anything against you; at least I wouldn't if you would only let me alone. I am very unhappy sometimes--almost always now; but at least I mean to make no one unhappy but myself." "That's what comes of books and poetry and solitary walks and nonsense! Why can't you listen to the advice of those who love you?" She turned upon him angrily again. "Well, I am not speaking of myself now, but of your--your people, who only desire your good. Mr. Saulsbury, Mrs. Saulsbury----" "Once for all, Mr. Sheppard, I shall not take their advice; and if you would have me think of you with any kindness at all, any memory not disagreeable and--and detestable, you will not talk to me of their advice. Even if I had been inclined to care for you, Mr. Sheppard, you took a wrong way when you came in their name and talked of their authority. Next time you ask a girl to marry you, Mr. Sheppard, do it in your own name." He caught eagerly at the kind of negative hope that seemed to be held out to him. "If that's an objection," he began, "I assure you that I came quite of my own motion, and I am the last man in the world to endeavor to bring any unfair means to bear. Of course it is not as if they were your own parents, and I can quite understand how a young lady must feel----" "I don't know much of how young ladies feel," Minola said quietly, "but I know how I feel, Mr. Sheppard, and you know it too. Take my last word. I'll never marry you. You only waste your time, and perhaps the time of somebody else as well--some good girl, Mr. Sheppard, who would be glad to marry you and whom you will be quite ready to make love to the day after to-morrow." Her heart was hardened against him now, for she thought him mean and craven and unmanly. Perhaps, according to her familiar creed, she ought rather to have thought him manly, meanness being in that sense one of the attributes of man. She did not believe in the genuineness of his love, and in any case no thought was more odious to her than that of a man pressing a girl to marry him if she did not love him and was not ready to meet him half way.