After a while he stood up, hurled the damp wig into the woods, wiped his hands on his knickerbockers and his face on his sleeve, and, bending over, examined his collapsed calves. And all the while, as the fumes of the chloroform disappeared and he began to realise what had been done to him, he was becoming madder and madder. She recognised the wrath in his face as he swung on his heel and came toward her. "It is your own fault!" she said, resolutely, "for playing a silly trick like----" But she observed his advance very dubiously, straightening up to her full slender height to confront him, but not rising to her feet. Her knees were still very shaky. He halted close in front of her. Something in the interrogative yet fearless beauty of her upward gaze checked the torrent of indignant eloquence under which he was labouring, and, presently, left him even mentally mute, his lips parted stupidly. She said: "According to the old order of things a well-bred man would ask my pardon. But a decently-bred man, in the first place, wouldn't have done such a thing to me. So your apology would only be a paradox----" "What!" he exclaimed, stung into protest. "Am I to understand that after netting me and chloroforming me and nearly drowning me----" "My mistake was perfectly natural. Do you suppose that I would even dream of trailing _you_ as you really are?" He gazed at her bewildered; passed his unsteady hand over his countenance, then sat down abruptly beside her on the mossy log and buried his head in his hands. She looked at him haughtily, sitting up very straight; he continued beside her in silence, face in his hands as though overwhelmed. Nothing was said for several minutes--until the clear disdain of her gaze changed, imperceptibly; and the rigidity of her spinal column relaxed. "I am very sorry this has happened," she said. There was, however, no sympathy in her tone. He made no movement to speak. "I am sorry," she repeated after a moment. "It is hard to suffer humiliation." "Yes," he said, "it is." "But you deserved it." "How? I didn't fashion my face and figure." She mistook him: "_Somebody_ did." "Yes; my parents." "What!" "Oh, I don't mean that silly make-up," he said, raising his head. "What _do_ you mean?" "I mean my own face and figure. What you did to me--your netting me, doping me, and all that wasn't a patch on what you said afterward." "What do you mean? What did I say?" "You asked me if I supposed that you would dream of netting a man with a face and f-figure like----" "Mr. Langdon!" "Didn't you?" "I--you--we----" "You did! And can any man suffer any humiliation to compare with words like those? I merely ask you." With eyes dilated, breath coming quickly, she stared at him, scarcely yet comprehending the blow which her words had dealt to one of the lords of creation. "Mr. Langdon," she said, "do you suppose that I am the sort of girl to deliberately criticise either your features or your figure?"