how utterly,
absolutely impossible it was now. There is no rate of exchange for
Romance in the heart of a woman; she gives her whole soul for it,
and nothing but Romance will she take in return.

"It's no good saying that," she replied; "things don't come when you
expect them to. It surely can't be right for people to marry when
they are only hoping that one of them may love the other."

"But you seem to forget the position I'm offering you," he said. "Is
that no inducement?"

"No; I'm not forgetting it. But do you think position is everything
to a woman?"

"No; but she likes a home."

"Then why do you think I gave up mine?"

"I didn't know you had given it up. I thought you had been compelled
to earn your living."

"No; not at all. My father was a clergyman down in Kent. He only died
last year. My mother still lives there and my two sisters. I could
have a home there if I wished to go back to it."

He looked at her in a little amazement. "I suppose I don't understand
women," he said genuinely.

She looked up into his uninteresting face--the weak, protruding
lower lip, the drooping moustache that hung on to it--then she
smiled.

"I suppose, really, you don't," she agreed. "I think we'll go back;
I'm getting cold."

They walked back silently together, all the night sounds of the river
soothing to her ears, jarring to his. A train rushed by, thundering
over the bridge from Gunnersbury way; he looked at it, frowning,
waiting for the noise to cease; she watched it contentedly, thinking
that it had come from the Temple where Traill was a barrister-at-law.

"Then I suppose it's no good my saying any more," said Mr. Arthur,
as he stood at the door with his latch-key ready in the lock. He waited
for her answer before he turned it.

"No, no good," she replied gently; "I'm so sorry, but it isn't. I
hope it won't be the cause of any unfriendliness; you have been very
good to me, and I do really appreciate the honour of it." The same
phrases, with but little variation, that every woman uses. It is an
understood thing amongst them that a man is conscious of paying them
honour when he asks them in marriage, and that it is better to show
him that they are sensitive to it. He thinks of nothing of the
kind--certainly not at the time. That last appreciation of the honour
is the final application of a caustic to the wound that smarts the
most of all--though in the end it may heal.

Mr. Arthur turned the key viciously i