"I will: What a brute you are!"

"So another lady told me a few months ago. Come, tell me."

"Why should I tell you anything?" She tried to touch her tone with scorn.

"Because I choose. You thought you could play with me and fool me and trick me out of what I mean to have--"

"What you mean to have?"

"Yes, what I mean to have. I mean to marry Miss Desmond--if she'll have me."

"_You_--mean to marry? Saul is among the prophets with a vengeance!"

The scorn came naturally to her voice now.

Vernon stood as if turned to stone. Nothing had ever astonished him so much as those four words, spoken in his own voice, "I mean to marry."

He repeated them. "I mean to marry Miss Desmond, if she'll have me.

And it's your doing."

"Of course," she shrugged her shoulders. "Naturally it would be. Won't you sit down? You look so uncomfortable. Those French tragedy scenes with the hero hat in one hand and gloves in the other always seem to me so comic."

That was her score, the first. He put down the hat and gloves and came towards her. And as he came he hastily sketched his plan of action.

When he reached her it was ready formed. His anger was always short lived. It had died down and left him competent as ever to handle the scene.

He took her hands, pushed her gently into a chair near the table, and sat down beside her with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands.

"Forgive me, dear," he said. "I was a brute. Forgive me--and help me.

No one can help me but you."

It was a master-stroke: and he had staked a good deal on it. The stake was not lost. She found no words.

"My dear, sweet Jasmine lady," he said, "let me talk to you. Let me tell you everything. I can talk to you as I can talk to no one else, because I know you're fond of me. You are fond of me--a little, aren't you--for the sake of old times?"

"Yes," she said, "I am fond of you."

"And you forgive me--you do forgive me for being such a brute? I hardly knew what I was doing."

"Yes," she said, speaking as one speaks in dreams, "I forgive you."

"Thank you," he said humbly; "you were always generous. And you always understand."

"Wait--wait. I'll attend to you presently," she was saying to her heart. "Yes, I know it's all over. I know the game's up. Let me pull through this without disgracing myself, and I'll let you hurt me as much as you like afterwards."

"Tell me," she said gently to Vernon, "tell me everything."

He was silent, his face still hidden. He had cut the knot of an impossible situation and he was pausing to admire the cleverness of the stroke. In two minutes he had blotted out the last six months--months in which he and she had been adversaries. He had thrown himself on her mercy, and he had done wisely. Never, even in the days when he had carefully taught himself to be in love with her, had he liked her so well as now, when she got up from her chair to come and lay her hand softly on his shoulder and to say:

"My poor boy,--but there's nothing for you to be unhappy about. Tell me all about it--from the very beginning."

There was a luxurious temptation in the idea. It was not the first time, naturally, that Vernon had "told all about it" with a sympathetic woman-hand on his shoulder. He knew the strategic value of confidences. But always he had made the confidences fit the occasion--serve the end he had in view. Now, such end as had been in view was gained. He knew that it was only a matter of time now, before she should tell him of her own accord, what he could never by any brutality have forced her to tell. And the temptation to speak, for once, the truth about himself was overmastering. It is a luxury one can so very rarely afford. Most of us go the whole long life-way without tasting it. There was nothing to lose by speaking the truth.

Moreover, he must say something, and why not the truth? So he said:

"It all comes of that confounded habit of mine of wanting to be in love."

"Yes," she said, "you were always so anxious to be--weren't you? And you never were--till now."

The echo of his hidden thought made it easier for him to go on.

"It was at Long Barton," he said,--"it's a little dead and alive place in Kent. I was painting that picture that you like--the one that's in the Salon, and I was bored to death, and she walked straight into the composition in a pink gown that made her look like a La France rose that has been rained on--you know the sort of pink-turning-to-mauve."

"And it was love at first sight?" said she, and took away her hand.

"Not it," said Vernon, catching the hand and holding it; "it was just the usual thing. I wanted it to be like all the others."

"Like mine," she said, looking down on him.

"Nothing could be like _that_," he had the grace to say, looking up at her: "that was only like the others in one thing--that it couldn't last.--What am I thinking of to let you stand there?"

He got up and led her to the divan. They sat down side by side. She wanted to laugh, to sing, to scream. Here was he sitting by her like a lover--holding her hand, the first time these two years, three years nearly--his voice tender as ever. And he was telling her about Her.

"No," he went on, burrowing his shoulder comfortably in the cushions, "it was just the ordinary outline sketch. But it was coming very nicely. She was beginning to be interested, and I had taught myself almost all that was needed--I didn't want to marry her; I didn't want anything except those delicate delightful emotions that come before one is quite, quite sure that she--But you know."

"Yes," she said. "I know."

"Then her father interfered, and vulgarized the whole thing. He's a parson--a weak little rat, but I was sorry for him. Then an aunt came on the scene--a most gentlemanly lady,"--he laughed a little at the recollection,--"and I promised not to go out of my way to see Her again. It was quite easy. The bloom was already brushed from the adventure. I finished the picture, and went to Brittany and forgot the whole silly business."

"There was some one in Brittany, of course?"

"Of course," said he; "there always is. I had a delightful summer.

Then in October, sitting at the Cafe de la Paix, I saw her pa.s.s. It was the same day I saw you."

"Before or after you saw me?"

"After."

"Then if I'd stopped--if I'd made you come for a drive then and there, you'd never have seen her?"

"That's so," said Vernon; "and by Heaven I almost wish you had!"

The wish was a serpent in her heart. She said: "Go on."

And he went on, and, warming to his subject, grew eloquent on the events of the winter, his emotions, his surmises as to Betty's emotions, his slow awakening to the knowledge that now, for the first time--and so on and so forth.

"You don't know how I tried to fall in love with you again," he said, and kissed her hand. "You're prettier than she is, and cleverer and a thousand times more adorable. But it's no good; it's a sort of madness."

"You never were in love with me."

"No: I don't think I was: but I was happier with you than I shall ever be with her for all that. Talk of the joy of love! Love hurts--hurts d.a.m.nably. I beg your pardon."