n. These, being only a
wild lily, you did not comprehend. You do not love me, or you
would give me my promise fast enough on other grounds. You
leave me a very difficult way. You leave me no way but to take
measures to remove you from temptation. Is not that less
pleasant, Hazel, than to give me the promise?'

She was silent for several minutes; not pondering the
question, but fighting the pain. To be _forced_ into anything,--
to have _him_ take that tone with her!--

'How will you do it?' she said.

He hesitated and then answered gently,

'You need not ask me that. You will not make it necessary.'

'Not ask?' said Wych Hazel rousing up. 'Of course I ask! Do
you expect to frighten me off my feet with a mere impersonal
"it"?'--Then with a laugh which somehow told merely of pain,
she added: 'You might cut short my allowance, and stint me in
slippers,--only that unfortunately the allowance is a fixed
fact.'

'I did not mean to threaten,' he said in a voice that
certainly spoke of pain on his own part. 'Is it so much to
promise, Hazel?'

'You did do it, however,' said the girl,--'but we will pass
that. Everything is "much" to promise. And why I refuse, Mr.
Rollo, is not the question. But it seems to me, that while my
father might command me, on my allegiance, to give such a
promise, no delegated authority of his can reach so far. I may
find myself mistaken.'

'Do me justice,' he said. 'I did not command a promise; I sued
for it. The protection the promise was to throw around you, I
will secure in other ways if I must. But do not forget, Hazel,
why I do it.'

'I do not believe you know,' said the girl excitedly. ' "Wild
lilies?"--why, even wild elephants are not usually required to
tie their own knots. What comes next? I should like to have
the whole, if possible, before I get home--which seems likely
to be about breakfast time.'

'Reo is driving as fast as he ought to drive, such a night.
What do you mean by "what comes next"?'

'You said, I thought, you had several things to speak of.'

'I remember. I was going to ask you to go to see Gyda
sometimes.'

'That is already disposed of--if I am to be allowed to go
nowhere,' said Hazel, with a rush of pain which very nearly
got into her voice. 'The next, Mr. Rollo?'

'I think, nothing next. You know,' he went on, speaking half
lightly, and yet with a thread of tender persuasion in his
voice, 'you know that next year you can dispose of me. Seeing
that in t