"’Love’s not Time’s fool!’" said Claude, quoting dithyrambically. "We’ll never be separated, darling, will we?" "Well—not for the present," said Janet, with dancing eyes. "I won’t vouch for our dim and distant feelings." "No teasing, you darling imp!" "Claude, I mean it. If—if it should turn out that your father was right, that will merely prove that we were wrong." He was at a complete loss how to treat her incredible self-surrender. As a man of the world, he was part scandalized, part uneasy, according as he swerved from the conviction that Janet was candid, to the suspicion that she was designing. Again, as a gay Bohemian trifler, he saw in her attitude an easy way out of possible complications. Whether he should or should not carry out his offer of marriage was now a question he would not have to face. She did not mean to put his vows to the test! This was breath-bereaving, staggering; it was even slightly annoying. But, her eccentric choice being a fact, surely the consequences did not rest on his soul? "Janet, you don’t know what you are doing!" he cried out involuntarily, being torn many ways at once. She, too, was greatly agitated; but, under the pressure of her theory, she kept her head. While he stood there as if distraught, she poured out a flood of reasons to which he scarcely listened. For instance, she said it was criminal for two people to form a permanent union or bring children into a family until they were sure of being well-suited to each other and of establishing a family that children would wish to enter. All marriages ought to be trial marriages of the kind that George Meredith had suggested long ago. Moreover, until she became independent in the matter of money, she couldn’t dream of subscribing to any permanent arrangement. He replied that this was all nonsense and derided Meredith as a bookworm and a dreamer. For his own part, hadn’t he money enough to provide for them both? If she wouldn’t take half his money, she didn’t love him. That was flat! "I do love you!" cried Janet, with more visible emotion than before. "That’s why I mustn’t marry you." He rose with a wild movement. "I must save myself—and you, too!" he murmured. "I’m going abroad by the first steamer." But these words were dashed with insurgent passion. Handsome, hypnotic, intense, his whole being vibrated towards her. She surrendered incontinently. "Not without me!" she said, enchaining him in her arms. He kissed her tempestuously. "It’s a daring step, and a perilous one," he said, more in weak protest than in forceful remonstrance. "No, no, no!" she cried, as with a gesture of ecstasy she hid her face on his shoulder. *PART IV* *NEMESIS* *CHAPTER TWENTY* *I*