"Oh! I know it's no use. But I must say it; I must tell you." He spoke with quick, nervous emotion. "It isn't as if I'd ever done or said anything since you came out here married to deserve the way you've sat on me lately--or if I have, I didn't know it. I thought I'd been so jolly careful! It hasn't been easy--and it's no good pretending now that I don't care for you, or for you to pretend that you don't know it. You knew it when I was at home last year, and we had such ripping times together. If only I'd been able to afford to marry, wouldn't you have taken me--Trixie? Wouldn't you? Instead of marrying a man old enough to be your great-grandfather!" The boy had lost his head; his words came with passionate bitterness. "Guy, be quiet!" Trixie broke in, distressed and alarmed. "You must be mad to talk like this." He paid no heed. "No, I'm not mad--unless, perhaps, with wretchedness. I could stand it all as long as you treated me as a pal, and were kind, and let me do things for you. But you suddenly kicked me off like an old shoe, and, as far as I can see, for no reason whatever. I want to know," he went on doggedly, "what I've done." "You haven't done anything," she hastened to tell him. "It's all your silly imagination. Do, for goodness' sake, go on rowing; we shall never catch up the others before they land." He sat motionless, waiting. "Guy--you _must_ row on. I'll tell you nothing while you behave like this. It's beastly of you. Look--we're floating to the other side of the river! Guy, do be sensible!" That was what she had said to him last year at home, when he had "talked nonsense" at a dance before he had to sail for India. They both remembered it now. In her agitation she clutched at the rudder-lines confusedly, and the boat almost swung round. He steadied it with the oars, but he did not go on rowing. "Would you have married me if it had been possible?" he persisted, though now more calmly. There was a long pause. The boat moved sideways, gravitating towards the farther bank, nearing ridges of sand and islets of brushwood and rubbish, mysterious shapes that stuck up sharp and fantastic in the moonlight. Something swished past, rippling the water with swift cleavage--a long, black water-snake hurrying to its refuge. And a mighty splash broke the stillness--a crocodile disturbed from its stupor on a sandbank. "No," said Trixie in a low, tense voice, "I would not have married you. I think I could never have married anybody but George."