e? Do you really love me?' he replied to her, with thick,
agitated utterance.

'Why should you ask that? How can you doubt it?'

'If you really love me---'

His face and tones frightened her.

'Don't make me doubt _your_ love! If I have not perfect trust in you
what will become of me?'

Yet once more she drew resolutely away from him. He pursued, and held
her arms with violence.

'Oh, I am mistaken in you!' Monica cried in fear and bitterness. 'You
don't know what love means, as _I_ feel it. You won't speak, you won't
think, of our future life together--'

'I have promised--'

'Leave loose of me! It's because I have come here. You think me a
worthless woman, without sense of honour, with no self-respect--'

He protested vehemently. The anguished look in her eyes had its effect
upon his senses; by degrees it subjugated him, and made him ashamed of
his ignoble impulse.

'Shall I find a lodging for you till Tuesday?' he asked, after moving
away arid returning.

'Will you?'

'You are sure you can leave home to-morrow--without being suspected?'

'Yes, I am sure I can. He is going to the City in the morning. Appoint
some place where I can meet you. I will come in a cab, and then you can
take me on to the--'

'But you are forgetting the risks. If you take a cab from Herne Hill,
with your luggage, he will be able to find out the driver afterwards,
and learn where you went.'

'Then I will drive only as far as the station, and come to Victoria,
and you shall meet me there.'

The necessity of these paltry arrangements filled her soul with shame.
On the details of her escape she had hardly reflected. All such
considerations were, she deemed, naturally the care of her lover, who
would act with promptitude, and so as to spare her a moment's
perplexity. She had imagined everything in readiness within a few
hours; on _her_ no responsibility save that of breaking the hated bond.
Inevitably she turned to the wretched thought that Bevis regarded her
as a burden. Yes, he had already his mother and his sisters to support;
she ought to have remembered that.

'What time would it be?' he was asking.

Unable to reply, she pursued her reflections. She had money, but how to
obtain possession of it? Afterwards, when her flight was accomplished,
secrecy, it appeared, would be no less needful than now. That necessity
had never occurred to her; declaration of the love that had freed her
seemed inevitable--nay, desirable. Her