I repeated. "To the Willoughby."

She gave me a look that was meant to scorch--and it did. But I showed
at the surface no sign of how I was wincing and shrinking.

She drew further into her corner, and out of its darkness came, in a
low voice: "How I _hate_ you!" like the whisper of a bullet.

I kept silent until I had control of myself. Then, as if talking of a
matter which had been finally and amicably settled, I began: "The
apartment isn't exactly ready for us, but Joe's just about now
telephoning my man that we are coming, and telephoning your people to
send your maid down there."

"I wish to go to my uncle's," she repeated.

"My wife will go with me," said I, quietly and gently. "I am
considerate of her, not of _her_ unwise impulses."

A long pause, then from her, in icy calmness: "I am in your power just
now, but I warn you that, if you do not take me to my uncle's, you
will wish you had never seen me."

"I've wished that many times already," said I, sadly. "I've wished it
from the bottom of my heart this whole evening, when step by step fate
has been forcing me on to do things that are even more hateful to me
than to you. For they not only make me hate myself, but make you hate
me, too." I laid my hand on her arm and held it there, though she
tried to draw away. "Anita," I said, "I would do anything for
you--live for you, die for you. But there's that something inside
me--you've felt it--and when it says 'must,' I can't disobey--you know
I can't. And, though you might break my heart, you could not break
that will. It's as much your master as it is mine."

"We shall see--to-morrow," she said.

"Do not put me to the test," I pleaded. Then I added what I knew to be
true: "But you will not. You know it would take some one stronger than
your uncle, stronger than your parents, to drive me from what I
believe right for you and for me." From the moment that I found the
bogy of conventionality potent enough with her to frighten her into
keeping her word and marrying me, I had no fear for "to-morrow." The
hour when she could defy me had passed.

A long, long silence, the electric speeding southward under the
arching trees of the West Drive. I remember it was as we skirted the
lower end of the Mall that she said evenly: "You have made me hate you
so that it terrifies me. I am afraid of the consequences that must
come to you and to me."

"And well you may be," I answered, gently. "For you've seen enough of
me t