as there only because of a desire
to make up ever so little for having teased him. He had been
consistently generous to her. She had hoped, from his manner, that he
was simply going to be nice and kind and not indulge in romantics. She
was wrong, evidently. It was no new thing, though. She was well
accustomed to his being dramatic and almost foreign. He had said many
amazing things but always remained the civilized man, and never
attempted to make a scene. She liked him for that, and she had tried
him pretty high, she knew. She did wish that he would be good that
night, but there was nothing to say in reply to his appeal. And so she
went over to one of the pews and sat down among the cushions.

"I'll give you another hour, then," she said.

But the word had begun to rankle. "Fencing!--Fencing! ..."

He repeated it several times.

She watched him wander oddly about the room, thinking aloud rather than
speaking to her. How different he had become. For the first time it
dawned upon her that the whole look of the man had undergone a change.
He held himself with less affectation. His petulance had gone. He was
like a Gilbert Palgrave who had been ill and had come out of it with
none of his old arrogance.

He took up a cigarette and began wandering again, muttering her
unfortunate word. She was sorry to have hurt his feelings. It was the
very last thing that she had wanted to do. "Aren't there any matches?"
she asked. "Ring for some."

She was impatient of indecision.

He drew up and looked at her. "Ring? Why? No one will come."

"Are we the only people in the house, then?"

"Yes," he said. "That's part of my plan."

"Plan?" She was on her feet. "What do you mean? Have you thought all
this out and made a scheme of it?"

"Yes; all out," he said. "The moment has come, Joan."

No longer did the scent of honeysuckle take Joan back to the sun-bathed
cottage and the voice behind the door. No longer did she feel that all
this wasn't really happening, that it was fantastic. Stark reality
forced itself upon her and brought her into the present as though some
one had turned up all the lights in a dark room. She was alone with the
man whom she had driven to the limit of his patience. No one knew that
she was there. It was a trick into which she had fallen out of a new
wish to be kind. A sense of self-preservation scattered the dire
effects of everything that had happened during the afternoon. She must
get out, quickly. Sh