"I've been a rotter--an absolute rotter, darling. I ought to have warned you the moment I found out. I ought to have told you that it didn't make any difference. It hasn't, it can't make any difference, not the slightest difference. Nothing that your sister may have done, may do, can affect us one way or the other. It's you I want to marry, not your sister." "Jimmy!" He was conscious of his arms round her--of his lips on hers--of her yielding to his kisses--returning them. The gush of Jimmy's passion, of her own, frightened the girl. Somehow she freed herself from his kisses; and stood upright, tremulous, blushing a little, stammering a little, altogether incoherent. "Jimmy, you mustn't, you oughtn't to. It isn't fair to me. It's not fair to Alie." "What's she got to do with it?" Mollie could see the big vein on her lover's forehead throb to each syllable. "What's she got to do with us?" "Everything." For a moment the girl felt herself the stronger. "Everything. It isn't fair. Can't you see why it isn't fair? How can I marry you?" Her voice broke. "How can I take my happiness while Alie's an outcast? She _is_ an outcast. You wouldn't, you couldn't let her come to our wedding." "Then you care for your sister more than you care for me?" interrupted Wilberforce, shirking the issue. "I don't! I don't!" Strength had gone out of Mollie; she felt herself weak, incapable. "It isn't that. It isn't that a bit. Only I can't take my happiness while Alie's miserable. She is miserable, though she won't admit it. Don't you see how rotten it would be of me if I married you--with things as they are?" "No, I don't." Her recalcitrance angered him. "You must. Jimmy," softly, "you do want me to be happy with you, don't you?" "Of course I want you to be happy with me." His anger relented. "I'd do anything in the world to make you happy." "Would you, dear?" "Rather. Only tell me what it is." "It's only Alie." Loyalty strung her to the sacrifice. "Only Alie. Can't you do something for her? You're a lawyer; you know how these things are managed. Oh, do, please do something to help her, to help"--the young voice dwindled to a whisper--"to help both of us. Jimmy, I do want to marry you. I want to marry you most awfully. But I simply can't even promise to marry you with things as they are. It wouldn't be decent of me. Honestly it wouldn't. It wouldn't be decent of either of us. It wouldn't be playing the game." They faced each other, half in love and half in hostility. "You really mean that, Mollie?" "Yes, I really mean it." "And if I _could_ manage to do anything?" "If you only could"--she smiled into his eyes--"there wouldn't be a thing in the world to keep us apart." Jimmy took the girl in his arms; and again she let herself answer his kisses. "I'll move heaven and earth and the lord chancellor," vowed James Wilberforce to that sleek bobbed head. 4