in six months; and if half
the people who are just going to get married would do the same thing
there would be a lot more happy women in the world, not to say men!
That's all, and she knew it, poor girl, and was just as glad as I was
when the thing was done. Now what is there so brutal in that, Madame
Cordova?'

Margaret turned on him almost fiercely.

'Why do you tell me all this?' she asked. 'For heaven's sake let poor
Miss Bamberger rest in her grave!'

'Since you ask me why,' answered Mr. Van Torp, unmoved,' I tell you
all this because I want you to know more about me than you do. If you
did, you'd hate me less. That's the plain truth. You know very well
that there's nobody like you, and that if I'd judged I had the
slightest chance of getting you I would no more have thought of
marrying Miss Bamberger than of throwing a million dollars into the
sea after that book, or ten million, and that's a great deal of
money.'

'I ought to be flattered,' said Margaret with scorn, still facing the
wind.

'No. I'm not given to flattery, and money means something real to me,
because I've fought for it, and got it. Your regular young lover will
always call you his precious treasure, and I don't see much difference
between a precious treasure and several million dollars. I'm logical,
you see. I tell you I'm logical, that's all.'

'I daresay. I think we have been talking here long enough. Shall we go
back?'

She had got her anger under again. She detested Mr. Van Torp, but she
was honest enough to realise that for the present she had resented his
saying that Lushington's book was probably trash, much more than what
he had told her of his broken engagement. She turned and came back to
the ventilator, meaning to go around to her chair, but he stopped her.

'Don't go yet, please!' he said, keeping beside her. 'Call me a
disgusting brute if you like. I sha'n't mind it, and I daresay it's
true in a kind of way. Business isn't very refining, you know, and it
was the only education I got after I was sixteen. I'm sorry I called
that book rubbish, for I'm sure it's not. I've met Mr. Lushington in
England several times; he's very clever, and he's got a first-rate
position. But you see I didn't like your refusing the book, after I'd
taken so much trouble to get it for you. Perhaps if I hadn't thrown it
overboard you'd take it, now that I've apologised. Would you?'

His tone had changed at last, as she had known it to change before