ne woman out of
all the millions? There must be something not yet understood.
Suddenly he dropped on to the seat, holding his head in his hands. "I
don't know what on earth I am going to do," he said.

She looked at him--so helpless in his passion--and the protective
instinct of a real woman for her man began to stir in her: so, in spite
of her own pain, she tried hard to find something to say that would
comfort him. "You--you'll get over it," she said, her voice shaking.
"It isn't as if you and I had been going together long, you know.
You'll soon forget me."

"Don't!" he said sharply.

She drew back offended. "Oh! All right." She rose with a sort of
dignity. "I think I'd better be going home. It must be getting late."

"Now you're vexed." He peered at her--haggard-eyed in that curious
twilight from the sea. "Can't you see that everything you do and say
makes me want you more? If you'd only turned out a fool!" He drew a
long breath.

"I must be going home," she repeated, moving away.

He caught hold of her dress as she went. "Carrie, I can't let you go.
I can't do without you."

"You'll have to," she said sombrely. "We shall both have to. There's
no help for it."

He waited a moment, then the words seemed to come out of
themselves--despite him. "I'm not married yet, you know."

She started. "You don't mean----" Then she backed away from him, the
silhouette of her slim figure very clear against the luminous
background of sea and sky--every line of it dragging at his
senses--hurting him with pity. "You know you couldn't do it," she said
after a pause. "We neither of us could. It would kill her. Besides,
I couldn't sneak another girl's man after the banns were up and the
cake bought--a girl who'd never done me any harm. I aren't so low down
as all that, yet."

"Anything is better than marrying without love," he said, but he said
it half-heartedly. How was a decent man to throw over a charming
devoted girl to whom he was to be married in a fortnight, shaming her
before all her little world after he had sought and won her? He
thought of Laura's soft acquiescence with an agony of self-reproach and
impatience. Then he heard Caroline speaking again, her voice low and
clear with the murmur of the sea running in and out of it--he felt it
go to his heart.

"It's too late to begin to think whether you'll be miserable or not
now," she said. "You made her fond of you. It was your own doing.