‘That is nothing to me,’ she replied; ‘it does not concern me. I do not care what your prospects are. I thank you very much for your--civility, but I refuse.’ He was at a loss for words; he felt like a man dealing with a mad person, one to whom the very rudiments of reason and conduct seemed to convey nothing. But the flagrant absurdity of her attitude gave him hope; there were some things too monstrous for reality. ‘I will give you time to think it over,’ he said at last. ‘That is quite useless. My answer is ready now.’ ‘But what can be your objection?’ he broke out. ‘What do you want, what do you expect, that I cannot give you?’ ‘I want a husband whom I can love,’ she replied, sharply. ‘I have told you that I do not care for you, sir. Let that be the end.’ ‘But love would come after, Miss Raeburn; I have heard that often. It always does with a woman; you would learn to love me.’ He stopped and looked at her. Through her growing exasperation his very fatuity, as he stood there, almost touched her. To her mind he was so unfit an object for the love he spoke of, parrot-fashion, so ignorant of realities. A man cannot understand things for which he has been denied the capacity; like Lady Eliza, in the midst of her anger, she could see the piteous side of him and be broad-minded enough to realize the pathos of limitation. ‘Don’t think I wish to hurt you,’ she said gently, ‘but do not allow yourself to hope for anything. I could never love you--not then any more than now. I am honestly sorry to give you pain.’ ‘Then why do you do so?’ he asked pettishly. She almost laughed; his attitude was invincible. ‘You will regret it some day,’ he said. ‘But _you_ never will; you will be very happy one day with someone else who finds importance in the same things as you do. I should never suit you.’ ‘Not suit me? Why not? You do yourself injustice.’ ‘But it is true, sir.’ ‘You are fitted for the very highest position,’ he said, with solemnity. That night Cecilia sat in her room at the open window. Her dark hair fell in a long, thick rope almost to the ground as she leaned her arms on the sill, and looked out over the dew. High in the sky the moon sailed, the irresponsible face on her disc set above the trailing fragments of cloud. From fields near the coast the low whistle of plover talking came through the silence, and a night-jar shrieked suddenly from the belt of trees near the dovecot. She turned her face towards the sound, and saw in its shadow a piece of stonework glimmering in the white light. To her mind’s eye appeared the whole wall in a flare of torchlight, and a figure standing in front of it, panting, straight and tense, with a red stain on brow and cheek. She had told Crauford Fordyce that she could not marry him because she did not love him, and, assuredly, she had not lied. She had spoken the truth, but was it the whole truth?