you all this often enough, you know.'

'Yes.'

'But it hasn't been morally injurious to you,' he said with a laugh.

'Not at all. Still I don't like it.'

Jasper was startled. He gazed at her. Ought he, then, to have dealt
with her less frankly? Had he been mistaken in thinking that the
unusual openness of his talk was attractive to her? She spoke with quite
unaccustomed decision; indeed, he had noticed from her entrance that
there was something unfamiliar in her way of conversing. She was so much
more self-possessed than of wont, and did not seem to treat him with the
same deference, the same subdual of her own personality.

'You don't like it?' he repeated calmly. 'It has become rather tiresome
to you?'

'I feel sorry that you should always represent yourself in an
unfavourable light.'

He was an acute man, but the self-confidence with which he had entered
upon this dialogue, his conviction that he had but to speak when he
wished to receive assurance of Marian's devotion, prevented him from
understanding the tone of independence she had suddenly adopted. With
more modesty he would have felt more subtly at this juncture, would have
divined that the girl had an exquisite pleasure in drawing back now that
she saw him approaching her with unmistakable purpose, that she wished
to be wooed in less off-hand fashion before confessing what was in her
heart. For the moment he was disconcerted. Those last words of hers had
a slight tone of superiority, the last thing he would have expected upon
her lips.

'Yet I surely haven't always appeared so--to you?' he said.

'No, not always.'

'But you are in doubt concerning the real man?'

'I'm not sure that I understand you. You say that you do really think as
you speak.'

'So I do. I think that there is no choice for a man who can't bear
poverty. I have never said, though, that I had pleasure in mean
necessities; I accept them because I can't help it.'

It was a delight to Marian to observe the anxiety with which he turned
to self-defence. Never in her life had she felt this joy of holding a
position of command. It was nothing to her that Jasper valued her more
because of her money; impossible for it to be otherwise. Satisfied that
he did value her, to begin with, for her own sake, she was very willing
to accept money as her ally in the winning of his love. He scarcely
loved her yet, as she understood the feeling, but she perceived her
power over him, and passion tau