king an unfair advantage. Don't you see--what--"

"What my aunts will think?" asked Constance coolly. "Oh, yes, I've
considered all that."

She walked away, and came back, a little pale and grave. She sat down on
the arm of a chair and looked up at him.

"I see. You are as proud as ever."

That hurt him. His face changed.

"You can't really think that," he said, with difficulty.

"Yes, yes, you are!" she said, wildly, covering her eyes a moment with
her hands. "It's just the same as it was in the spring--only
different--I told you then--"

"That I was a bully and a cad!"

Her hands dropped sharply.

"I didn't!" she protested. But she coloured brightly as she spoke,
remembering certain remarks of Nora's. "I thought--yes I did think--you
cared too much about being rich--and a great swell--and all that. But so
did I!" She sprang up. "What right had I to talk? When I think how I
patronised and looked down upon everybody!"

"You!" his tone was pure scorn. "You couldn't do such a thing if you
tried for a week of Sundays."

"Oh, couldn't I? I did. Oxford seemed to me just a dear, stupid old
place--out of the world,--a kind of museum--where nobody mattered.
Silly, wasn't it?--childish?" She drew back her head fiercely, as though
she defied him to excuse her. "I was just amusing myself with it--and
with Otto--and with you. And that night, at Magdalen, all the time I was
dancing with Otto, I was aiming--abominably--at you! I wanted to provoke
you--to pay you back--oh, not for Otto's sake--not at all!--but just
because--I had asked you something--and you had refused. That was what
stung me so. And do you suppose I should have cared twopence, unless--"

Her voice died away. Her fingers began fidgeting with the arm of the
chair, her eyes bent upon them.

He looked at her a moment irresolute, his face working. Then he said
huskily--

"In return--for that--I'll tell you--I must tell you the real truth
about myself. I don't think you know me yet--and I don't know myself.
I've got a great brutal force in me somewhere--that wants to brush
everything--that hinders me--or checks me--out of my path. I don't know
that I can control it--that I can make a woman happy. It's an awful risk
for you. Look at that poor fellow!" He flung out his hand towards that
distant room whence came every now and then a fresh wave of music. "I
didn't intend to do him any bodily harm--"

"Of course not! It was an accident!" cried Connie passion