, then began to grow angry owing to a reaction
from his fright. "A nice fool you would make me look if you turned me
down now. I suppose you don't realize that my friends in the train
just wink at each other when they ask me to go anywhere of an evening,
knowing I shan't go. Then one chap--funny chap he is--always says,
'How's the C.R. doing?' You mayn't know where the joke comes in, but
C.R. stands for a railway as well as Carrie Raby. And after all that,
I'm to be played fast and loose with. It's carrying things a bit too
far. I don't say I agree with the times when men clubbed girls over
the head and brought them home like that, but I will say the pendulum
has swung too far. A girl can't have a boy of her own and be as free
as if she hadn't. I don't know what you think you want, Carrie."

"I've no wish to be horrid, I'm sure," said Caroline. "I do think it
is most awfully kind and generous of you to want to give me a ring.
But I feel as if I would rather not have one."

"Well, have it your own way, of course. Only I can't make all this
out," said Wilf. "If you didn't fancy me for a husband you might have
found out before. You've had plenty of time."

"But I never _did_ think of you as a husband, somehow," said Caroline.
"We began to walk out together like boys and girls do, and it has gone
on. I don't say I shall never feel different. I can't picture myself
ever wanting to go with anybody but you. Only there it is." She
paused, looking out to sea, and the wash of the waves brought back to
some degree those feelings which she had experienced when he talked
about the five thousand pounds. "I'm sorry if I've hurt your feelings,
Wilf. I'm sure I didn't want to. I only wanted to be straight with
you."

"Well, we'll let it pass," said Wilf. "Girls have all sorts of funny
feelings we don't have, I expect; and a lot would have taken the ring
first and talked afterwards. I like a girl to be straight."

But he did not. He was at the stage when what he most wanted from the
female sex was a sugared insincerity which looked like crude candour
and independence. And as they walked on again, though they were linked
together, she certainly appeared less desirable to him than she had
done when she was circling round the hall in Wilson's arms with her
bright draperies glowing between the gaslight and the sunset.

When they had said farewell at the gate of the Cottage garden and he
stood waiting until he he