ral allowance. . . .

"O no, no, no, I can't!" Isabel cried out, turning from him.
"Yes, I love you, but I don't trust you, and I won't marry you.
I'm too much afraid."

"Afraid of me?"

"Afraid of the pain."

"What pain?"

"And the--wickedness of it." Lawrence, frozen with astonishment--he
had foreseen resistance, but not of this quality--let fall her hand.
"Yes, we'll part now. We can part now. I love you, but not too much
to get over it in a year or so; and you? you'll forget sooner,
because I'm not worth remembering."

"Forget you?"

"Oh! yes, it's not as if you really cared for me; you wouldn't
talk to me of money if you did. But I suppose you've known so
many. . . . Val warned me long ago that you had not a good name
with women."

"Val said that? Val!"

"And now you're angry with Val; I repeat what I oughtn't to
repeat, and make mischief. Lawrence, this isn't Val's doing; it
isn't even Mrs. Cleve's: it's my own cowardice. I daren't marry
you."

"But why not?"

"You're not trying to be good."

"The language of the nursery defeats me, Isabel."

She flushed. "That means I've hurt you."

"Naturally."

"I can't help it." That was truer than he realized, for she could
hardly help crying. She could not soften her refusal, because she
was so shaken and exhausted by the strain of it that she dared
not venture on more than one sentence at a time.

"I'm very sorry."

"But as my wife you could be as 'good' as you liked?"

"You would not leave me strength for it."

"I should corrupt you?"

"Yes, I think you would deliberately tempt me. . . . I think you
have tonight."

"Do you care for no one but yourself?" he flung at her in his
vertigo of humiliation and anger.

"No: I care for God."

"For God!" Lawrence repeated stupidly: "what has that to do with
your marrying me?"

He heard his own betise as it left his lips, and felt the
immeasurable depth of it, but he had not time to retract before
every personal consideration was wiped from his mind by a cry
from Isabel in a very different accent--"Lawrence! oh! look at
the time!"

She pointed to the dial of an illuminated clock, hanging high in
the soft September night. It was eight minutes to twelve. "What
time did you say our train went?"

They were in Whitehall. Lawrence caught up the speaking tube.
"Waterloo main entrance--and drive like the devil, please, we're
late."

"I thought we had plenty of time?"

"So we had: so muc