But if he was exploiting Janet’s infatuation for him, he was not doing so consciously. And the fact remained that, had she been so minded, she could just as easily have exploited his infatuation for her. Indeed, the latter would have been easier. Claude was not aware of this. He was aware only of his own power, and he believed he was exercising almost superhuman self-control in an effort to avoid compromising her future. He believed he was doing this now, whilst fishing for an answer to Janet’s candid "_why not?_" A few hours earlier, in Huntington, under the concerted pressure of the Armstrong family, he had realized that he would have to give up either Marjorie or Janet; and it had occurred to him that if he took Janet now, Marjorie was not lost to him later; whereas if he took Marjorie now, Janet was lost to him forever. Naturally, it was not in terms of pitiless realism that he sought to explain his choice. A more heroic explanation was that he had given up Marjorie for Janet’s sake, and that, on a peremptory summons of the heart, he had run away from Huntington determined to risk everything—from his father’s wrath to the loss of Mr. Armstrong’s protection in the matter of smuggled diamonds. The heroic explanation was the one he meant to give to Janet. Looking, at the moment, into Janet’s gray eyes in their superb setting of long, dark lashes, he was ready to give his thoughts any form that might be acceptable to her. Surely, such a mixture of radical daring and native good sense, of enticement and candor, of self-reliance that ennobled her and soft yielding that flattered _him_—such a mixture had never before been found in one woman. It made her exquisite, enigmatic, thrilling and quite indispensable to him. So reasoned his heart. And all his commanding nonchalance returned. *V* The result was that when Janet, failing to get an answer to her question, repeated anew her wish to accompany him abroad, he enfolded her in his arms and said: "After all, why not?" And after a fervent embrace, he added: "Janet, I think you ought to face what’s in store for us." "Don’t let’s cross bridges, Claude," she pleaded. "We’ll get married, of course," he went on, unheeding her. "Frankly, my father won’t like it. He’ll probably make Rome howl. However, he’ll get used to it in the end—especially when he meets you. But, though there’s a storm ahead, you are brave and we’ll weather it, I’m sure." "Your father won’t raise a storm," said Janet, with a strange smile, "for a small but important reason. Remember, I’m not going to be married." "Janet!" "You know I don’t believe in it." They argued the matter pro and con, she spiritedly, he lamely. Janet pointed out, among other things, that when Mr. Fontaine senior learnt of their free union he was little likely to attempt any serious interference, but would count on time to separate them.