"No! Rather of a rebuff. The lady tore her hand away in a hurry--the
link on the bracelet was thin, I suppose. Anyway, that was left in my
hand."

"You were proposing to her?"

"Well, hardly. I was married at the time."

There was a silence for some moments, during which Hilton slowly
gathered into his mind a consciousness of the humiliation which Kate
must have endured, and read in that the explanation of her words "I
had to marry." Marston took up the tale, babbling resentfully of
a nursery prudishness, but his remarks fell on deaf ears until he
mentioned a withered flower, which he had found inside the locket.
Then David's self control partially gave way. In imagination he saw
Marston carelessly tossing the sprig aside and the touch of his
fingers seemed to sully the love of which it was the token. The locket
burned into his hand. Without a word he dropped it on to the floor,
and ground it to pieces with his heel. A new light broke in upon
Marston.

"So this accounts for all your railing against the marriage laws," he
laughed. "By Jove, you have kept things quiet. I wouldn't have given
you credit for it."

His eyes travelled from the carpet to David's face, and he stopped
abruptly.

"You had better hold your tongue," David said quietly. "Pick up the
pieces."

"Do you think I would touch them now?"

Marston rose from his lounge; David stepped in front of the door.
There was a litheness in his movements which denoted obedient muscles.
Marston perceived this now with considerable discomfort, and thought
it best to comply: he knelt down and picked up the fragments of the
locket.

"Now throw them into the grate!"

That done, David took his leave. Once outside the house, however, his
emotion fairly mastered him. The episode of which he had just heard
was so mean and petty in itself, and yet so far-reaching in its
consequences that it set his senses aflame in an increased revolt
against the order of the world. Marriage was practically a necessity
to a girl as unprotected as Kate Alden; he now acquiesced in that. But
that it should have been forced upon her by the vanity of a trivial
person like Marston, engaged in the pursuit of his desires, sent a
fever of repulsion through his veins. He turned back to the door
deluded by the notion that it was his duty to render the occurrence
impossible of repetition. He was checked, however, by the thought of
Mrs. Branscome. The shame he felt hinted the full force of deg