"Don't call him that," Marise pleaded. "I understand how things are with him. But----" "I suppose people have coupled your names. Good God, I'm thankful you sent for me! No one shall ever say he jilted you. It shall be the other way round. When will you marry me, girl?" It was a new and piercing thought to Marise that, if Severance went home immediately and married his cousin, people would suppose she had been jilted. She, so sensitive to every breeze which blew praise or blame, ought to have realised that this would be the case. Strange that it needed a blundering fellow like John Garth to point out the peril. The girl saw at once that it was a real one. She shrank from the prospect as from a lash. She could hear the "cats" who had already been "horrid" in England, and the cats awaiting their chance to be horrid in New York, mewing with joy over this creamy dish of scandal. "I told you how it would be! As soon as he got the title, and a little money with it, he threw her over!" In a flash she saw a second motive for her marriage with Garth, if Severance were to marry OEnone Ionides. She must marry someone, and she hadn't the heart just now to pick and choose as, of course, she could do, given a little time. Prickling with shame over the explanation which she tried stumblingly to make, her impulse was to catch at the one Garth offered. Why not, since now that she thought of it, his point of view was hers? Pain would be saved for both. And she realised that she could not blurt out the naked truth in words. It seemed to her that, if she attempted to do so, this rude giant, this primitive man in New York "ready-mades," would kill her, as he had already suggested killing Severance. "Then you consent?" she took him up. "Consent? What do you think of me? Yes, I consent." "Only to be friends? You understand that part?" "I agree to that, to begin with. Because I'm so mad about you. I'd take you at any price." "To 'begin with'?" "Till I can make you care. I'm a man and you're a woman. And the rest may come. I'll chance it." "No. You mustn't hope for that. It won't come. I don't want it to come." "Hope isn't easy to kill. If it was, I guess the war wouldn't have ended the way it has. You don't know how I love you. Why, the thought even of calling you 'my wife' is--is a kind of glorious shell-shock." He laughed out, shyly yet violently, like a boy: and of a sudden Marise felt sick with guilt. "I mustn't let you be happy!" she cried. "Why not? You needn't grudge me that. But you haven't named the day yet--Marise. Lord! The thrill it gives me to say 'Marise' to your face--the way I've been saying it behind your back."