has
let her lovely length trail into the corner of the sofa, where she
desperately reclines, supporting her elbow on the arm of it, and
resting her drooping head on her hand. He draws a hassock up in front
of her, and sits on it.

_Ashley_: "This represents kneeling at your feet. One doesn't do it
literally any more, you know."

_Miss Ramsey_, in a hollow voice: "I should despise you if you did,
and"--deeply murmurous--"I don't _wish_ to despise you."

_Ashley_: "No, I understand that. You merely wish _me_ to despise
_you_. But why?"

_Miss Ramsey_, nervously: "You know."

_Ashley_: "But I don't know--Isobel, dearest, darling, if you will
allow me to express myself so fully. _How_ should I know?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "I've told you."

_Ashley_: "May I take your hand? For good-by!" He possesses himself of
it. "It seems to go along with those expressions."

_Miss Ramsey_, self-contemptuously: "Oh yes."

_Ashley_: "Thank you. Where were we?"

_Miss Ramsey_, sitting up and recovering her hand: "You were saying
good-by--"

_Ashley_: "Was I? But not before I had told you that I knew you were
doing all that for my best good, and I wish--I _wish_ you could have
seen how exemplary you looked when you were trying to pour a cocktail
out of a corked bottle, between your remarks on passionate fiction and
puffs of the insidious cigarette! When the venomous tobacco began to
get in its deadly work, and you turned pale and reeled a little, and
called for air, it made me mentally vow to go back to Miss Fray
instantly, whether I was engaged to her or not, and cut out poor old
Brooks--"

_Miss Ramsey_: "Was it Mr. Brooks? I didn't hear the name exactly."

_Ashley_: "When I was telling Miss Garnett? I ought to have spoken
louder, but I wasn't sure at the time you were listening. Though as
you were saying, what does it matter now?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "Did I say that?"

_Ashley_: "Words to that effect. And they have made me feel how
unworthy of you I am. I'm not heroic--by nature. But I could be, if
you made me--by art--"

_Miss Ramsey_, springing to her feet indignantly: "Now, you are
ridiculing me--you are making fun of me."

_Ashley_, gathering himself up from his hassock with difficulty, and
confronting her: "Do I look like a man who would dare to make fun of
you? I am half a head shorter than you, and in moral grandeur you
overtop me so that I would always have to wear a high hat when I was
with you."

_Miss Ramsey_, th