humour
which sometimes masks a defiance almost contemptuous.

But Rita's engagements required her to leave very shortly after his
advent; and before she went out she deliberately waited to catch
Valerie's eye; and Valerie coloured deeply under her silent message.

Then Rita went away with a scarcely perceptible nod to Querida; and
when, by the clock, she had been gone twenty minutes, Querida, without
reason, without preparation, and perfectly aware of his moment's
insanity, yielded to a second's flash of caprice--the second that comes
once in the lives of all women--and now, in the ordered symmetry of his
life, had come to him.

"Valerie," he said, "I love you. Will you marry me?"

She had been leaning sideways on the back of her chair, one hand
supporting her cheek, gazing almost listlessly out of the open window.

She did not stir, nor did her face alter, but, very quietly she turned
her head and looked at him.

He spoke, breathlessly, eloquently, persuasively, and well; the perfect
machinery was imitating for him a single-minded, ardent, honourable
young man, intelligent enough to know his own mind, manly enough to
speak it. The facsimile was flawless.

He had finished and was waiting, long fingers gripping the arms of his
chair; and her face had altered only to soften divinely, and her eyes
were very sweet and untroubled.

"I am glad you have spoken this way to me, Jose. Something has been said
about you--in connection with Mr. Cardemon--which disturbed me and made
me very sad and miserable, although I would not permit myself to believe
it.... And now I know it was a mistake--because you have asked me to be
your wife."

She sat looking at him, the sadness in her eyes emphasised by the
troubled smile curving her lips:

"I couldn't marry you, Jose, because I am not in love with you. If I
were I would do it.... But I do not care for you that way."

For an instant some inner flare of madness blinded his brain and vision.
There was, in his face, something so terrible that Valerie unconsciously
rose to her feet, bewildered, almost stunned.

"I want you," he said slowly.

"Jose! What in the world--"

His dry lips moved, but no articulate sound came from them. Suddenly he
sprang to his feet, and out of his twisted, distorted mouth poured a
torrent of passion, of reproach, of half-crazed pleading--incoherency
tumbling over incoherency, deafening her, beating in upon her, till she
swayed where she stood, hol