"No, no; you never made me angry," she protested. "But you made me feel absurd, and that is ever so much worse. I cannot be sure, now, that you are not merely laughing at me. Have you forgotten that you once thought me a prig? I have not altered; I am still a prig. How can you want to marry me when you have that image of me in your mind? It is hopeless to think of our marrying,--you with a secret contempt for me, and I with a perpetual fear of you!" The man in him alone spoke when he answered her. "Surely, it is enough that we love each other?" She shook her head. "Ah, you know it is not," she replied, with the strange little smile that had so often baffled him. "I--I do so wish you would understand--and go. Or shall I find my father and tell him that you are here?" He laid his hand against her cheek, and watched her closely. "Is it all over,--our friendship, your love for me, everything?" he whispered. "Do you remember how sweetly you nursed me three years ago? Have you forgotten the jolly talks we had together in the Temple? And all the fun we had together in London? Is it all to come to an end like this?" "I can't marry you; I don't love you enough for that," she said, moving restively under his touch. He stroked her cheek gently. "Then why do you thrill when I touch you?" he asked. "Why do you not send me away?" It was his last move, and he watched its effect anxiously. She looked at him helplessly. "I--I do send you away," she said faintly, and he made her join feebly in the laugh against herself. There was something contemptible in her surrender, she felt, as he folded her in his arms and looked down at her with a manly air of possession. "If this is not love what is it, you solemn little Puritan?" he murmured. "I don't know," said Katharine dully. She submitted passively to his embrace, and allowed him to kiss her more than once. "Of course you don't know," he smiled. "What a woman you are, and how I love you for it! Don't be so serious, sweetheart; tell me what you are thinking about so deeply?" It was pity for him, her old genuine love for him reawakening, that made her at last rouse herself to tell him the truth. "Will you please let me go, Paul?" she asked submissively. And as he loosened his arms and allowed her to go, she took one of his hands and led him with feverish haste round to the table, where Ted's letter still lay like a silent witness against herself. They stood side by side and looked at it, the white envelope on the red table-cloth, and it was quite a minute before the silence was broken. Then Katharine pulled him away again and covered up the letter with her hand and looked up in his face. "Do you know what is in that letter?" she asked, and without waiting for a reply went on almost immediately. "It is from Ted, to ask me to be his wife." "And you are going to say--" "Yes." Paul smiled incredulously.