"I should be--- by myself," she made answer. "I don't think I like India at too close quarters. She is so mysterious and so horribly ruthless." He passed over the last two sentences as though they had not been uttered. "But you are not afraid with me?" he said. She quivered at something in his question. "I am not sure," she said. "I sometimes think that you are rather ruthless too." "Do you know me well enough to say that?" he said. She tried to answer him lightly. "I ought to by this time. I have had ample opportunity." "Yes," he said rather bitterly. "But you are prejudiced. You cling to a preconceived idea. If you love me--it is in spite of yourself." Something in his voice hurt her like the cry of a wounded thing. She made a quick, impulsive movement towards him. "Oh, but that is not so!" she said. "You don't understand. Please don't think anything so--so hard of me!" "Are you sure it is not so?" he said. "Stella! Stella! Are you sure?" The words pierced her afresh. She suddenly felt that she could bear no more. "Oh, please!" she said. "Oh, please!" and laid a quivering hand upon his arm. "You are making it very difficult for me. Don't you realize how much better it would be for your own sake not to press me any further?" "No!" he said; just the one word, spoken doggedly, almost harshly. His hands were clenched and rigid at his sides. Almost instinctively she began to plead with him as one who pleads for freedom. "Ah, but listen a moment! You have your life to live. Your career means very much to you. Marriage means hindrance to a man like you. Marriage means loitering by the way. And there is no time to loiter. You have taken up a big thing, and you must carry it through. You must put every ounce of yourself into it. You must work like a galley slave. If you don't you will be--a failure." "Who told you that?" he demanded. She met the fierceness of his eyes unflinchingly. "I know it. Everyone knows it. You have given yourself heart and soul to India, to the Empire. Nothing else counts--or ever can count now--in the same way. It is quite right that it should be so. You are a builder, and you must follow your profession. You will follow it to the end. And you will do great things,--immortal things." Her voice shook a little. "But you must keep free from all hampering burdens, all private cares. Above all, you must not think of marriage with a woman whose chief desire is to escape from India and all that India means, whose sympathies are utterly alien from her, and whose youth has died a violent death at her hands. Oh, don't you see the madness of it? Surely you must see!" A quiver of deep feeling ran through her words. She had not meant to go so far, but she was driven, driven by a force that would not be denied. She wanted him to see the matter with her eyes. Somehow that seemed essential now. Things had gone so far between them. It was intolerable now that he should misunderstand.