?"

She took a quiet breath. "You have no right to question me in this
way," she said. "I think I have been very good in bearing with you so
long."

But she laid aside her indignation at once; he was so old a friend,
the sincerity of him had been so often tried. "If you must know,
David," she said, with a girlish frankness that became her better, "I
am not engaged to be married. And I must tell you nothing more," she
added, shutting her mouth decisively. She must be faithful to her
promise.

"He forbids it?" Gemmell asked mercilessly.

She stamped her foot, not in rage, but in hopelessness. "How incapable
you are of doing him justice!" she cried. "If you only knew----"

"Tell me. I want to do him justice."

She sat down again, sighing. "My attempt to regain my old power over
you has not been very successful, has it, David? We must not quarrel,
though"--holding out her hand, which he grasped. "And you won't
question me any more?" She said it appealingly.

"Never again," he answered. "I never wanted to question you, Grizel. I
wanted only to marry you."

"And that can't be."

"I don't see it," he said, so stoutly that she was almost amused. But
he would not be pushed aside. He had something more to say.

"Dr. McQueen wished it," he said; "above all else in the world he
wished it. He often told me so."

"He never said that to me," Grizel replied quickly.

"Because he thought that to press you was no way to make you care for
me. He hoped that it would come about."

"It has not come about, David, with either of us," she said gently. "I
am sure that would have been sufficient answer to him."

"No, Grizel, it would not, not now."

He had risen, and his face was whiter than she had ever seen it.

"I am going to hurt you, Grizel," he said, and every word was a pang
to him. "I see no other way. It has got to be done. Dr. McQueen often
talked to me about the things that troubled you when you were a little
girl--the morbid fears you had then, and that had all been swept away
years before I knew you. But though they had been long gone, you were
so much to him that he tried to think of everything that might happen
to you in the future, and he foresaw that they might possibly come
back. 'If she were ever to care for some false loon!' he has said to
me, and then, Grizel, he could not go on."

Grizel beat her hands. "If he could not go on," she said, "it was not
because he feared what I should do."

"No, no," Davi