alf-suppressed, unspent
storms of tears, they have such a tendency to return and break out again
inconveniently.

"If it were not for Captain Polkington would you have sent me away?"
he asked.

"Y--e--s," she answered, fighting with her tears. "Oh, go! Please,
please go!"

She crumpled herself into a small miserable heap and he leaned over
the block and drew her into his arms.

For a moment she struggled, burrowing her head into his coat; there
was a good deal of burrowing and not much struggling. "No, you
wouldn't," he said to her hair, "you would have married me."

"I might have said I would, but I shouldn't really have done it," she
contended without looking up. "I shouldn't when it came to the point.
You had better let me go, I am spoiling your coat, my face is all
wet--and I don't know where my handkerchief is."

"Take mine, you will find it somewhere. Tell me, why would you not
have married me when it came to the point? Because your courage failed
you?"

No answer; then, "I can't find that handkerchief."

"You have not tried. Are you afraid to try? Are you afraid of me? Is
that why you would not have married me--you would have been afraid to
live at close quarters with me? Do you still think you don't know me
well enough?"

"I don't know your name."

The answer was ridiculous, but he knew how the ridiculous touched even
tragedies for Julia.

"Hubert Farquhar Rawson-Clew," he said solemnly. "Now--"

But whatever was to have followed was prevented, for at that moment
she looked up, and for some reason, suddenly decided things had gone
far enough, and so freed herself.

"I don't think it matters much what I should have done," she said, "or
why, either. Father is not dead; you ought to know better than to talk
about such a thing; it is bad taste."

"Does that matter in the simple life? I thought when you retired you
were going to dispense with falsity and pretences, and say and do
honestly what you honestly thought, when it did not hurt other
people's feelings."

"So I do," she answered; "that is why, when I thought I was alone just
now, I asked out loud how it was that father was still alive. Since
then I have seen."

"What have you seen?"

"That it is to prevent me from making a great muddle of things. If he
had been dead I dare say I should have married you--I may as well
confess it since you know--and we both should have repented it ever
afterwards. As it is, if I were free to-morrow, I wo