fession
was true. But that word permit went too far. He wasn't enough of an
old-fashioned parent to believe, at all whole-heartedly, that Mary was
his to dispose of.

Again, he looked up at the man's face, braced for the retort his
challenge had laid him open to, and once more the expression he saw
there--a thing as momentary as a shimmer of summer lightning,--told him
more than anything within the resources of rhetoric could have effected.
It was something a little less than a smile that flashed across March's
face, a look half pitiful, half ironic. It told John Wollaston that his
permission was not needed. Events had got beyond him. He was superseded.

He dropped back limp in his chair. March seated himself, too, and leaned
forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped.

"I know how it must look to you, sir," he said gravely. "Even the social
aspect of the thing in the narrowest sense of the word is serious. And
there are other difficulties harder to get over than that. I don't think
I minimize any of them. And I don't believe that Mary does. But the main
thing is a fact that can't be escaped. If we face that first ..."

He broke off there for a moment and John saw him grip his hands together.
It was with a visible effort that he went on.

"One of the things Mary said last night was that sentimentality was the
crudest thing in the world. It caused more tragedies, she said, than
malice. She had learned the cruelty of it by experience. It's not an
experience she can safely go through again."

It was in an automatic effort to defend himself against the conviction he
felt closing down upon him that John lashed out here with a reply.

"The fact you're asking me to face is, I suppose, that you two have
discovered you're in love with each other to a degree that makes all
other considerations negligible."

"That's not quite it," March replied patiently. "A part of it is, that it
would have been just as impossible for Mary to marry Graham Stannard if
she had never seen me. And if she could forget me completely it would
still be impossible for her to marry any one else like him."

John didn't follow that very closely. His mind was still upon the last
sentence of March's former speech. "It's not an experience she can safely
go through again." What did he mean by that? How much did he mean by
that? Would John, if he could, plumb the full depth of that meaning?
There was no use fighting any longer.

"The simplest