ld me _that_ before, anyhow. Don't you see that I should go
on driving you mad? Don't you see how unhappy you'd be with me, how
impossible it all is?"

She laughed. It was marvelous to her how she achieved that laugh. It
was as if she had just thought of it and it came.

"I can see," he said, "that _you_ don't care for me."

He had given himself into her hands--hands that seemed to him diabolic
in their play.

"Did I ever _say_ I cared?"

"Well--of all the women--you _are_----! No, you didn't _say_ it."

"Did I ever show it?"

"Good God, how do _I_ know what you showed? If it had been any other
woman--yes, I could have sworn."

"You can't swear to any woman--I'm afraid--till you've married her.
Perhaps--not then."

"You shouldn't say things like that; they sound----"

"How do they sound?"

"As if you knew too much."

She smiled.

"Well, then--there's another reason."

He softened suddenly.

"I didn't mean that, Gwenda. You don't know what you're saying. You
don't know anything. It's only that you're so beastly clever."

"That's a better reason still. You don't want to marry a beastly
clever woman. You really don't."

"I'd risk it. That sort of cleverness doesn't last long."

"It would last your time," she said.

She rose. It was as much as giving him his dismissal.

He stood a moment watching her. She and all her movements still seemed
to him incredible.

"Do you mind telling me where you're going to?"

"I'm going to Mummy." She explained to his blankness: "My stepmother."

He remembered. Mummy was the lady who was "the very one," the lady of
remarkable resources.

It seemed to him then that he saw it all. He knew what she was going
for.

"I see. Instead of your sister," he sneered.

"Papa wouldn't let Ally go to her. But he can't stop _me_."

"Oh, no. Nobody could stop _you_."

She smiled softly. She had missed the brutality of his emphasis.

* * * * *

He said to himself that Gwenda was impossible. She was obstinate and
conceited and wrong-headed. She was utterly selfish, a cold mass of
egoism.

"Cold?" He was not so sure. She might be. But she was capable, he
suspected, of adventures. Instead of taking her sister away to have
her chance, she was rushing off to secure it herself. And the irony of
the thing was that it was he who had put it into her head.

Well--she was no worse, and no better--than the rest of them. Only
unlike them in the quee