'Will you tell me this,' he said, and his voice trembled with anxiety, 'if--if I had not written this book which was happy enough to give you some pleasure--if I had met you simply as Mark Ashburn, a man who had never written a line in his life, would you have been the same to me? Would you have felt even such interest in me as I like to think sometimes you do feel? Try to give me an answer.... You don't know how much it will mean to me.' Mabel took refuge in the impersonal. 'Of course,' she said, 'one often likes a person one never saw very much for something he has done; but I think if you ever do meet him and then don't like him for himself, you dislike him all the more for disappointing you. It's a kind of reaction, I suppose.' 'Tell me this too,' Mark entreated, 'is--is that _my_ case?' 'If it had been,' she said softly, 'do you think I should have said that?' Something in her tone gave Mark courage to dare everything. 'Then you do care for me a little?' he cried. 'Mabel, I can speak now. I loved you ever since I first saw you in that old country church. I never meant to tell you so soon, but I can't help it. I want you--I can't live without you! Will you come to me, Mabel?' She put both hands trustfully in his as she said, 'Yes, Mark,' and without any more words just then on either side, their troth was plighted. He was still holding the hands she had resigned to him, hardly daring as yet to believe in this realisation of his dearest hopes, when someone stepped quickly in through the light curtains. It was Caffyn, and he put up his eyeglass to conceal a slight start as he saw who were there. 'Sent to look for somebody's fan; told it was left on the folding chair. Ah, sorry to trouble you, Ashburn; that's it behind you; I won't say I found you sitting on it.' And he went out with his prize. 'I think, after that,' said Mabel, with a little laugh, though she was annoyed too, 'you had better take me back again.' And Mark obeyed, feeling that the unromantic interruption had effectually broken the spell. Fortunately it had happened after, and not before his fate had been decided. The evening was over, and he was waiting to recover his hat and overcoat when he was joined by Caffyn. 'Umbrella missing?' began the latter; 'mine is, like the departed Christians on the tombstones, you know, "not lost--but gone before." Are you going my way? Come on then.' When they were outside in the moonlight, he took Mark's arm and said, 'You've got something to tell me, haven't you?' 'I told you I should come to you for congratulations when we were at Triberg,' said Mark, 'but I never hoped to be able to come so soon. She has said "Yes," old fellow. I can't trust myself to talk about it just yet, but I can't help telling you that.'