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leaning forward to see her face, so she dropped her eyes, partly to let him look at her, and partly to avoid meeting his gaze. "I heard your speech in the piazza this morning. It would be useless to disguise the fact that some of its references were meant for me." He did not speak, and she played with the glove in her lap, and continued in the same soft voice: "If I were a man, I suppose I should challenge you. Being a woman, I can only come to you and tell you that you are wrong." "Wrong?" "Cruelly, terribly, shamefully wrong." "You mean to tell me...." He was stammering in a husky voice, and she said quite calmly: "I mean to tell you that in substance and in fact what you implied was false." There was a dry glitter in her eyes which she tried to subdue, for she knew that he was looking at her still. "If ... if...."--his voice was thick and indistinct--"if you tell me that I have done you an injury...." "You have--a terrible injury." She could hear his breathing, but she dared not look up, lest he should see something in her face. "Perhaps you think it strange," she said, "that I should ask you to accept my assurance only. But though you have done me a great wrong I believe you will accept it." "If ... if you give me your solemn word of honour that what I said--what I implied--was false, that rumour and report have slandered you, that it is all a cruel and baseless calumny...." She raised her head, looked him full in the face. "I _do_ give it," she said. "Then I believe you," he answered. "With all my heart and soul, I believe you." She dropped her eyes again, and turning with her thumb an opal ring on her finger, she began to use the blandishments which had never failed with other men. "I do not say that I am altogether without blame," she said. "I may have lived a thoughtless life amid scenes of poverty and sorrow. If so, perhaps it has been partly the fault of the men about me. When is a woman anything but what the men around have made her?" She dropped her voice almost to a whisper, and added: "You are the first man who has not praised and flattered me." "I was not thinking of you," he said. "I was thinking of another, and perhaps of the poor working women who, in a world of luxury, have to struggle and starve." She looked up, and a half-smile crossed her face. "I honour you for that," she said. "And perhaps if I had earlier met a man like you my life might hav
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