ad.
Marry me and you will learn to love me."

Beatrice glanced at him again, and a pang of pity pierced her heart. She
did not know it was so bad a case as this. It struck her too that she
was doing a foolish thing, from a worldly point of view. The man loved
her and was very eligible. He only asked of her what most women are
willing enough to give under circumstances so favourable to their
well-being--herself. But she never liked him, he had always repelled
her, and she was not a woman to marry a man whom she did not like.
Also, during the last week this dislike and repulsion had hardened and
strengthened. Vaguely, as he pleaded with her, Beatrice wondered why,
and as she did so her eye fell upon the pattern she was automatically
pricking in the sand. It had taken the form of letters, and the letters
were G E O F F R E--Great heaven! Could that be the answer? She flushed
crimson with shame at the thought, and passed her foot across the
tell-tale letters, as she believed, obliterating them.

Owen saw the softening of her eyes and saw the blush, and misinterpreted
them. Thinking that she was relenting, by instinct, rather than from any
teaching of experience, he attempted to take her hand. With a turn of
the arm, so quick that even Elizabeth watching with all her eyes saw
nothing of the movement, Beatrice twisted herself free.

"Don't touch me," she said sharply, "you have no right to touch me. I
have answered you, Mr. Davies."

Owen withdrew his hand abashed, and for a moment sat still, his chin
resting on his breast, a very picture of despair. Nothing indeed could
break the stolid calm of his features, but the violence of his emotion
was evident in the quick shivering of his limbs and his short deep
breaths.

"Can you give me no hope?" he said at last in a slow heavy voice. "For
God's sake think before you answer--you don't know what it means to me.
It is nothing to you--you cannot feel. I feel, and your words cut like
a knife. I know that I am heavy and stupid, but I feel as though you had
killed me. You are heartless, quite heartless."

Again Beatrice softened a little. She was touched and flattered. Where
is the woman who would not have been?

"What can I say to you, Mr. Davies?" she answered in a kinder voice. "I
cannot marry you. How I can I marry you when I do not love you?"

"Plenty of women marry men whom they do not love."

"Then they are bad women," answered Beatrice with energy.

"The world does