"No," he protested, in wild alarm. "It was only that I feel I--" "You feel that there could be a question of money between us?" she interrupted. "Not between _us_, Janet," he said eagerly; "but there is your--your mother." "I beg you," she replied coldly, "not to speak of mamma in that way to me, even if you have such unjust thoughts of her." Arthur looked at her uncertainly. He had an instinct, deep down, that there was something wrong--something in her that he was not fathoming. But in face of that cloud-dwelling beauty, he could only turn and look within himself. "I beg your pardon, dear," he said. "You know so little of the practical side of life. You live so apart from it, so high above it, that I was afraid I'd be doing wrong by you if I did not put that side of it before you, too. But in the bottom of my heart I knew you would stand by me." She remained cold. "I don't know whether I'm glad or sorry, Arthur, that you let me see into your real self. I've often had doubts about our understanding each other, about our two natures being in that perfect harmony which makes the true marriage. But I've shut out those doubts as disloyal to you. Now, you've forced me to see they were only too true!" "What do you mean, Janet? Of course, I'm not good enough for you--no one is, for that matter; but I love you, and--Do you care for me, Janet?" "Yes," she replied mournfully. "But I must conquer it. O Arthur, Arthur!" Her voice was tremulous now, and her strange hazel eyes streamed sorrowful reproach. "How could you think sordidly of what was sacred and holy to me, of what I thought was holy to us both? You couldn't, if you had been the man I imagined you were." "Don't blame a fellow for every loose word he utters when he's all upset, Janet," he pleaded. "Put yourself in my place. Suppose you found you hadn't anything at all--found it out suddenly, when all along you had been thinking you'd never have to bother about money? Suppose you--But you must know how the world, how all our friends, look on that sort of thing. And suppose you loved--just as I love you. Wouldn't you go to her and hope she'd brace you up and make you feel that she really loved you and--all that? Wouldn't you, Janet?" She looked sadly at him. "You don't understand," she said, her rosebud mouth drooping pathetically. "You can't realize how you shook--how you _shattered_--my faith in you." He caught her by the arms roughly. "Look here, Janet Whitney. Do you love me or don't you? Do you intend to throw me over, now that I have lost my money, or do you intend to be all you've pretended to be?" The sadness in her sweet face deepened. "Let me go, Arthur," she said quietly. "You don't understand. You never will." "Yes or no?" he demanded, shaking her. Then suddenly changing to tenderness, with all his longing for sympathy in his eyes and in his voice, "Janet--dear--yes or no?"