that was true!" she said. "No, I don't," came an instant
later. "If I thought that, I'd never speak to you again." Moving away a
little, she turned her head back towards him and went on, "Use it to pay
Dick Benyon. I'd rather you did that than gave me a thousand necklaces."

"Oh, Dick's in no hurry; he's got lots of money." Quisante was visibly
vexed this time. "Aren't you going to allow me to give you anything?" he
asked.

She had a struggle to win this time, and again had to call in the ally
she distrusted, an appeal to his vanity. She told him that it hurt her
idea, her great idea, of him, that he should be in any way under
obligations to or dependent on anybody. This way of putting the matter
caught his fancy, which had remained blind to the more prosaic aspect of
the case. "You must stand by your own strength," she said. She had to go
a step farther still. "It'll make Amy Benyon quite angry too; it'll take
away one of her grievances. Don't pay only the arrears, pay all you can."
Thus she won and was comforted, in spite of her suspicion of the weapons
that she found herself obliged to use.

Comfort she needed sadly, and it could come only from Quisante himself.
For the rest the sense of loneliness was strong upon her, and with it a
bitterness that this time in her life should be so different from what it
was in the lives of most girls. The superficials were there; friends sent
presents and Lady Attlebridge was as particular about the gowns and so
forth as though the match had been absolutely to her liking. But there
was no sincere congratulation, no sympathy, no envy. Her engagement was a
mistake, her marriage a tragedy; that was the verdict; she saw it in
every glance and discerned it under every civil speech. The common
judgment, the opinion of the group we have lived with, has a force
irrespective of its merit; there were times when May sank under the
burden of it and almost retreated. Then she was outwardly most contented,
took Quisante everywhere with her, tried (as people said) to thrust him
down everybody's throat, even pretended a love which she had expressly
denied to the man himself. All this done, she would fly to solitude and
there be a victim to her fears, shudder at the risk she had elected to
run, and pray for any strange convulsion of events to rescue her.

None came; time went on, people settled down to the notion; only to a
small circle the matter retained a predominant interest. The rest of the