“About our marriage.” She gave him a steady, penetrating look--the sort of look that always made him ill at ease with her and a little afraid of what marrying her might mean. “Do you want to marry me, Peter?” she asked. “What rot!” exclaimed he. His glance shifted. “You know you don’t,” rejoined the girl. “Your good sense tells you I’m not the sort of woman a man would enjoy being tied to unless she loved him. You don’t want to marry me, and I don’t want to marry you.” “What’s the use of this kind of talk?” he remonstrated. “Every use. Let’s refuse to marry.” Peter looked strangely alarmed, glanced round as if in mortal dread lest they were being overheard. “If your father hears of this he’ll blame me,” he cried. “I tell you I want to marry you. I’m determined to marry you. I’ve given my word and you’ve given yours. And we’ll marry on the----” “I ask you to release me,” interrupted the girl. “I’ll not do it!” And visions of money pouring out and mortgages pouring in put a note of shrill hysteria into his usually heavy voice. “I thought I could marry you,” said Beatrice, strong, vigorously strong under a surface of sweet gentleness. “I find I can’t. You’ll release me.” “I will not!” exclaimed Peter, once more shiny with sweat and mopping industriously. “And I want you to tell your father that I absolutely refused to release you--that I insisted on your marrying me.” “My father?” said the girl wonderingly. “What has he got to do with it?” Peter was winded for the moment. He recovered quickly, hastened to explain: “I--I’ve the highest respect for your father. I wouldn’t like him to think for a minute that I was careless about my word--or that I wasn’t bent and determined to marry you. I want you to understand, Beatrice. I hold you to your promise.” “As I’ve told you, I love another man,” said Beatrice. “I thought I was getting over it. I find it was simply a fit of the blues.” She smiled absently. “I ran across an old pipe of his that I had locked in a drawer--a horrid, smelly, old pipe. And--Peter, were you ever in love?” “With you,” said he, sullen and jealous--and certainly her expression, her tone, were not soothing to his vanity, fine and beautiful though they were in themselves. She laughed. “Your grandmother!” mocked she. “That pipe--it was like one of those enchanted things in The Arabian Nights. It made me see”--her eyes grew fascinatingly tender and dreamy--“and see--and _see_!... Could you marry a woman who felt like that about another man?” “Then why did you engage yourself to me?” “Because he won’t have me,” confessed she, her old-time pride in her love rampant. “I never heard such rot!” exclaimed he in disgust. “And I know you really don’t want to marry me,” she went on in a voice of appeal, of confidence in his manhood, in his friendliness for her, his childhood playmate.