id quietly, "that you understand now--"

"I do, and I have felt shame for it. I shall feel better now that I have
asked you to forgive. Joan," he went on passionately, "listen! A fool is
always hard to separate from his folly. But listen! That day when I saw
you in the City, when I made my egregious proposal to you--just for a
moment you were touched, something appealed to you. I do not know what
it was--my folly, my immense conceit--for which perhaps you pitied me.
But it was something, for that one moment I saw you change. The hard
look went from your face, a colour came into your cheeks, your eyes grew
soft and tender--just for one moment--"

"What does all this--"

"Listen, listen! Let me speak! It may be my last chance. I tell you I
saw you as I know you must be--the real woman, not the hard, the
condemning judge that you have been to me. And as I saw you for that one
moment, I have remembered you and pictured you in my thoughts; and
seeing you in memory I have grown to love that woman I saw, to love her
with all my heart and soul."

Love! It dawned on her, this man, who had made a sport of her name, was
offering her love now! Love! she sickened at the very thought of it--the
word had been profaned by Philip Slotman's lips.

"I believe," she thought, "I believe that there is no such thing as
love--as holy love, as true, good, sweet love! It is all selfish passion
and ugliness!"

"Just now, Mr. Alston"--her voice was cold and scornful, and it chilled
him, as one is chilled by a drenching with cold water--"just now you
said perhaps you lacked humour. I do not think it is that, I think you
have a sense of humour somewhat perverted. Of course, you are only
carrying this--this joke one step further--"

"Joan!"

"And as you drove me from Cornbridge Manor, I suppose you will now drive
me from this house. Am I to find peace and refuge nowhere, nowhere?"

"If--if you could be generous!" he cried.

She flushed with anger. "You have called me ungenerous before! Am I
always to be called ungenerous by you?"

"Forgive me!" His eyes were filled with pleading. He did not know
himself, did not recognise the old, happy-go-lucky Hugh Alston, who had
accepted many a hard knock from Fate with a smile and a jest.

"And so I am to be driven from this home, this refuge--by you?" she said
bitterly. "Oh, have you no sense of manhood in you?"

"I think I have. You shall not be driven away. I, of course, am the one
to go. Thro