t a
loss for a word. "I am very _glad_ we fought."

"Oh, Roger!"

"Aren't you?"

"How can you ask me such a heartless question?"

"Don't you see what it has done for us? Has it not taught us that"--very
tenderly this--"we _love_ each other?" His tone alone would have brought
her round to view anything in his light. "And somehow," he goes on,
after a necessary pause--"I mean," with an effort that speaks volumes
for his sense of propriety, "Gower will give in, and absolve you from
your promise. He may as well, you know, when he sees the game is up."

"But when will he see that?"

"He evidently saw it to-day."

"Well, he was very far from giving in to-day, or even dreaming of
granting absolution."

"Well, we must make him see it even _more_ clearly," says Roger,
desperately.

"But how?" dejectedly.

"By making violent love to me all day long, and by letting me make it to
you. It will wear him out," says Mr. Dare confidently. "He won't be able
to stand it. Would--would you much mind trying to make violent love to
me?"

"Mind it?" says Dulce, enthusiastically, plainly determined to render
herself up a willing (very willing) sacrifice upon the altar of the
present necessity. "I should _like_ it!"

This _naive_ speech brings Roger, _if possible_, a little closer to her.

"I think I must have been utterly without intellect in the old days, not
to have seen then what a darling you are."

"Oh, no," says Dulce, meekly, which might mean that, in her opinion,
either _he_ is not without intellect, or she is not a darling.

"I was abominable to you then," persists Roger, with the deepest
self-abasement. "I wonder you can look with patience at me now. I was a
perfect bear to you!"

"_Indeed_ you were not," says Dulce, slipping her arm round his neck.
"You couldn't have been, because I am sure I loved you even then; and
besides," with a little soft, coaxing smile, "I won't listen to you at
all if you call my own boy bad names."

Rapture; and a prolonged pause.

"What _shall_ we do if that wretched beggar won't relent and let me
marry you?" says Roger, presently.

"Only bear it, I suppose," with profoundest resignation; it is _so_
profound that it strikes Mr. Dare as being philosophical, and displeases
him accordingly.

"_You_ don't seem to care much," he says, in an offended tone, getting
up and standing with his back to the mantelpiece, and his face turned to
her, as though determined to keep an eye on her.