"It can't have been such a _very_ long time," she answered, still looking at me in that queer way that made me feel uncomfortable. "Surely you must remember who told you. It is hardly the sort of thing one would be told every day--or even twice in one's life, is it?" "Honestly," I said with quick decision, "I can't tell you how I came to know it." "Your `cannot' means `will not,'" she said, and her lip twitched in the curious way that I knew meant she was nettled. However, after that she dropped the subject, and I felt relieved. I hated deceiving her, yet I was compelled. I am not an adept in the art of what Lamb calls "walking round about a truth," at least, not for more than a minute or two at a time, and my love had such quick intelligence that it is no easy matter--as I had several times discovered, to my discomfiture--to mislead her. For the first time since we had met in the house in Belgrave Street, our conversation became purely personal. I had almost feared the events of the past weeks might have altered her regard for me, and it afforded me intense relief to find I was mistaken. For I was desperately in love with her, more so than I cared to admit even to myself. And now I found to my joy that my love for her was apparently fully reciprocated. And yet why should she care for me? This puzzled me, I confess, though I know as a thoroughgoing man of the world and as a cosmopolitan that women do take most curious likes and dislikes. I am neither clever, good-looking nor amusing, nor, I believe, even particularly "good company" as it is called. There are scores upon scores of men just like myself. You meet them everywhere, in town and in the country. Society teems with them, and our clubs are full of them. Men, young and middle aged, who have been educated at the public schools and Universities, who have comfortable incomes, are fond of sport, who travel up and down Europe, who have never in their lives done a stroke of work--and don't intend ever to do one if they can help it--who live solely for amusement and for the pleasure of living. What do women see in such men, women who have plenty of money and therefore do not need to marry in order to secure a home or to better themselves? What did--what could Vera Thorold see in me to attract her, least of all to tempt her to wish to marry me? "Vera, my dearest," I said, when we had talked of each other's affairs for a considerable time, "why not marry me now? I can get a special licence! Then you will be free of all trouble, and nobody will be able to molest you. I shall have a right to protect you in every way possible." "Free of all trouble if I marry you, Richard?" she answered, reflectively, evading my question, and looking at me queerly. "And why not?" I asked. I felt rather hurt, for her words seemed to imply some hidden meaning. "Don't you think I shall be good to you and treat you properly?"