g. But you will remember
that I am grateful to you to the last drop of my heart's blood--and so
is she.

"Now as for B.... The finish has come; it came to-day. Let us sing and
give thanks with the best member that we have! All the same, the end
has been a shock, and I wish it had come in some other way.

"She came in here at eleven this morning. You know who--Jessica. I
thought she came to talk over last night's concert. It was a failure.
The room was as empty as the church has been of late. Those--women (my
cloth prohibits me from supplying the adjective, Charles. I leave it
with satisfaction in your hands) with their gabble have robbed me of my
last shred of character. I assure you I am regarded as a libertine in
the place--a professional breaker of hearts, a Don Juan bragging of my
conquests! Each of those Fifteen has her own tale to tell of her own
wrongs and of my deceit. They hold indignation meetings in Mrs Carter's
house. I shouldn't care the value of one of their hairpins, but one
does not like to see the church empty; and it is not agreeable, having
gone to the bother of getting up a concert, to sing to empty benches.
It was not, however, to talk over the concert she had come.

"She had come to tell me she thought it would be better for us
thoroughly to understand each other. I said I thought we had done so
from the first. She told me she hoped so, but that we were going to
speak out plainly now. She despised the underhand methods of other
women, she said, and when she wanted to know a thing she went to the
person capable of giving an answer and asked a direct question.

"Then she asked me, 'Did I mean to make her an offer of marriage?'

"In so many words she asked me, and never flinched.

"And I didn't flinch. I was so indignant, so outraged!

"'No!' I said.

"I hope I did not shout the word, but the room seemed to echo with it,
somehow.

"'You mean that?' she asked; and I said that I meant it fervently.

"She got up and went to the door. There she waited, her hands in her
coat-pockets, staring at the door. 'Of course you know that you have
behaved disgracefully?' she said. 'I should never have trusted myself
so much in your society but that I believed you to be an honourable
man. I find you are not. If my father were younger he would punish you
as you deserve. As it is--.'

"As it is, thank goodness, she went. Where's the good of bothering you
with more of her invective?

"And I am going; to m