she knew that she should have been insulted, yet she had no feeling at all, no sense of indignation; there was only a curious faintness that made her afraid. Somehow she understood that all this in reality had nothing to do with insults, with conventions, even with laws. It was something which might never again come her way and yet something which was to be feared, because it might destroy her forever. At last she said, "Why should I forgive you? It would make no difference now. . . ."
"It would make a difference. . . . It would make a difference," he said quickly. "I want you to marry me. . . . We can arrange everything. It makes no difference how." And then after a sharp silence, he added in a low voice, "There is a magnificence about you, . . . a bravery . . ." And the rest of the sentence trailed away so that she did not hear it.
Out of a great depth as if by a great physical effort she returned into the daylight. She found her lips moving. She found herself saying over and over again, "I must remember. . . . I must remember. . . . I must not ruin everything." He had never even asked whether she loved him. He had accepted it as a fact. He had asked her nothing. He had come simply to take her.
Then she withdrew her hand slowly and sat staring at it with an air of looking at some object unfamiliar to her. "I can't marry you," she said slowly. "I can't. . . . I can't. . . . There is nothing to be done. . . . There is nothing to be done." And she began to cry silently, so that the tears fell down upon her hands.
The speech appeared to astonish him, for he made no effort to regain her hand but sat staring at her as at a stranger. When at last he spoke it was in a voice that was low and caressing, but the tenderness had slipped away and in its place there was a hardness, as of steel; it was like a sudden glimpse of claws emerging from a soft and furry paw.
"Is it because you won't give him up," he asked, "as you told my mother?"
"It is because I cannot give him up. . . . I cannot treat him that way. . . . I cannot . . . cannot."
