“You can’t say I didn’t tell you I should do something. I did nothing else from the first--I mean but tell you. So you were warned again and again. You knew what to expect.” “Ah don’t say THAT again; if you knew how it acts on my nerves!” the young man groaned. “You speak as if you had done it on purpose--to carry out your absurd threat.” “Well, what does it matter when it’s all over?” “It’s not all over. Would to God it were!” The girl stared. “Don’t you know what I sent for you to come in here for? To bid you good-bye.” He held her an instant as if in unbelievable view, and then “Francie, what on earth has got into you?” he broke out. “What deviltry, what poison?” It would have been strange and sad to an observer, the opposition of these young figures, so fresh, so candid, so meant for confidence, but now standing apart and looking at each other in a wan defiance that hardened their faces. “Don’t they despise me--don’t they hate me? You do yourself! Certainly you’ll be glad for me to break off and spare you decisions and troubles impossible to you.” “I don’t understand; it’s like some hideous dream!” Gaston Probert cried. “You act as if you were doing something for a wager, and you make it worse by your talk. I don’t believe it--I don’t believe a word of it.” “What don’t you believe?” she asked. “That you told him--that you told him knowingly. If you’ll take that back (it’s too monstrous!) if you’ll deny it and give me your assurance that you were practised upon and surprised, everything can still be arranged.” “Do you want me to lie?” asked Francie Dosson. “I thought you’d like pleasant words.” “Oh Francie, Francie!” moaned the wretched youth with tears in his eyes. “What can be arranged? What do you mean by everything?” she went on. “Why they’ll accept it; they’ll ask for nothing more. It’s your participation they can’t forgive.” “THEY can’t? Why do you talk to me of ‘them’? I’m not engaged to ‘them’!” she said with a shrill little laugh. “Oh Francie _I_ am! And it’s they who are buried beneath that filthy rubbish!” She flushed at this characterisation of Mr. Flack’s epistle, but returned as with more gravity: “I’m very sorry--very sorry indeed. But evidently I’m not delicate.” He looked at her, helpless and bitter. “It’s not the newspapers in your country that would have made you so. Lord, they’re too incredible! And the ladies have them on their tables.” “You told me we couldn’t here--that the Paris ones are too bad,” said Francie. “Bad they are, God knows; but they’ve never published anything like that--poured forth such a flood of impudence on decent quiet people who only want to be left alone.” Francie sank to a chair by the table as if she were too tired to stand longer, and with her arms spread out on the lamplit plush she looked up at him. “Was it there you saw it?”