You don't want to take it back again?"

"Perhaps, when you know everything, you'll want me to."

"Tell me 'everything' now, then," he said grimly, "and you'll soon see
whether I want you to or not."

Nan was fighting desperately to gain time. She needed it more than
anything--time to think, time to weigh the pros and cons of the matter,
time to decide. The past was pulling at her heart-strings, filling her
with a sudden terror of the promise she had just given Roger.

"I can't tell you anything now," she said rather breathlessly. "I did
try--a little while ago, and you wouldn't listen. You--you _must_ give
me a few days--you must! If you don't, I'll say 'no' now--at once!"
her voice rising excitedly.

She was overwrought, strung up to such a pitch that she hardly knew
what she was saying. She had been through a good deal in the last hour
or two and Trenby realised it. Suddenly that grim determination of his
to force her promise, to bind her his here and now, yielded to an
overwhelming flood of tenderness.

"It shall be as you wish, Nan," he said very gently. "I know I'm
asking everything of you, and that you're frightened and upset to-day.
I ought not to have spoken. And--and I'm a lot older than you."

"Oh, it isn't that," replied Nan hastily, fearing he might be feeling
sore over the disparity in their respective ages. She did not want him
to be hurt about things that would never have counted at all had she
loved him.

"Well, if I wait till Monday--that's four days--will that do?" he asked.

"Yes. I'll tell you then."

"Thank you"--very simply. He lifted her hands to his lips. "And
remember," he added desperately, "that I love you, Nan--you're my whole
world."

He paced the short length of the room and back, and when he came to her
side again, every trace of emotion was wiped out of his face.

"Now I'm going to take you back home. Mrs. Denman"--smiling
faintly--"says she'll put 'an 'assock' in the car for your damaged leg
to rest on, so with rugs and that coat you were so averse to bringing I
think you'll be all right."

He went to the table and poured out something in a glass.

"Drink that," he said, holding it towards her. "It'll warm you up."

Nan sniffed at the liquid in the glass and tendered it back to him with
a grimace.

"It's brandy," she said. "I hate the stuff."

"You'll drink it, though, won't you?"--persuasively.

"No," shaking her head. "I can't bear the taste of i