Arthur.

"And you don't love him?" he said.

"No."

"Respect him?"

She paused. The pause answered him. The tension of the moment lifted.

"Yes. I respect him. I know he's honourable. He must be reliable.

After all he's offering me everything."

You would have thought, to hear her, that the matter was yet in the balance, swaying uncertainly before it recorded the weight. There is the instinct of the woman in that. She felt the shadow of his apprehension; knew that she raised her value in his eyes by the seeming presence of debate. Yet none realized better than she, that Mr. Arthur had been stripped of all possibility now. The fateful comparison had been made--the comparison which most women make in the decision of such momentous issues--one man against another.

Their emotions are the agate upon which the scales must swing. In favour of the man before her, they swung with ponderous obviousness.

"Then you'll marry him?" said Traill.

She looked at him questioningly--raised eyebrows--the look of mute appeal. You might have read anything behind her eyes--you might have read nothing. Traill studied them wonderingly.

"You'll marry him--of course," he repeated. He was taking the risk.

He might be forcing her to say yes. He prepared himself for it. To take that risk, knowing one way or another, rather than blindly groping to the end, this was typical of him. But he could not force her to the answer that he sought for.

"Do you think I ought to?" she asked.

He drummed his fingers on the table and looked through her.

"Why do you ask me?"

"I'm sorry." She returned sensitively to the food that was before her--"I thought you had seemed interested. I'm sorry--I took too much for granted."

He knew the danger of all this--so did she. But danger of what? That dancing upon the edge of the precipice of emotion is in the normal heart of every woman--and he? He sought it out; to the edge he had brought her, knowing the way--every step of it. She had only followed blindly where he had led. Once there, she knew well the chasm on whose edge she was balancing. Natural instinct alone would have told her that. The height was dizzy. She had known well that if ever she gazed down, it would be that. Her head swam with the giddiness of it. She kept her eyes fixed rigidly on the plate before her, not daring to look up, or meet his glance.

"Suppose you haven't taken too much for granted," he suggested quietly.

"Well?" she raised her head--tried to look with unconcern into his eyes--failed. Then her head dropped again.

"I should say--don't marry him--not yet--wait. The harm that is done by waiting is measurable by inches. Wait. How old are you? Is that rude? No--of course it isn't. It's only rude when a woman's got to answer you with a lie. How old are you? Twenty?"

"Twenty-one."

"Twenty-one! I was fifteen when you first woke up and yelled."

She threw back her head and laughed.

"Why do you laugh?"

"You say such funny things sometimes."

"I remember the first joke I made you thought was bad taste."

She looked at him. There was excitement in her eyes. The rush of the stream had taken her; an impulse for the moment carried her away.

"I repeated that joke afterwards," she said quickly, "the same evening to shock Mr. Arthur."

The moment she had said it, came regret. It was showing him too plainly the impression that he had left upon her. But he seemed not to notice it.

"Was he shocked?" he asked.

"Yes--terribly."

She looked at her watch. That moment's regret had brought her to her senses. The blood came quickly to her face, as she thought how intimately they had talked within so short a time. Reviewing it--as with a searchlight that strides across the sky--she scarcely believed that it was true. In just an hour, she had told him as much--more than she had told Miss Hallard. Had she changed? Was the freedom of the life she lived altering her? She had known Mr. Arthur for a year and a half before he had thought of speaking with any intimacy to her. The thought that she was deteriorating--becoming as other women--pa.s.sed across her mind with a sensation of nausea.

She rose to her feet.

"I must get back," she said.

"But it's only just two," he replied.

"I know, but then I came out five minutes early."

"Are they so fierce as that?"

"Yes, I daren't be late. Mr. Bonsfield gives me his letters directly after lunch. I think he'd tell me I might go, if I was late. You see it's very easy for them to get a secretary, the work's not difficult though there's a lot of it; and there are hundreds of girls who'd be ready to fill my place in a moment."

He watched her considerately. "Thank G.o.d, my lance is free," he said.

"Well--I suppose you must--if you must. I've enjoyed the talk."

Her eyes lighted, smiling. "So have I--immensely--it is very good of you. Good-bye." She held out her hand.

"Do you think you get off so lightly?" he asked.

"How do you mean?"

"I mean--do you think I'm going to let you go without some chance of seeing you again?"

"But--"

He checked that. He could not guess what had been pa.s.sing through her mind, yet the note in her voice on that one word was discouraging.

"You are going to come to dinner with me one evening."

She was full of indecision. He gave her no time to think. It was not his intention to do so.

"But how can I?" she began.

"By coming dressed--just as you are. No need to go home and change.

I'll be ready to meet you outside the office at six o'clock. You don't get out till a quarter past? Then a quarter past. We go to dinner--we go to a theatre; music-hall if you like--then I drive you down to Waterloo, put you in the last train to Kew Bridge--and that is all."

She laughed in spite of herself.