s is life!'

She stopped suddenly. 'I must go back now--this is altogether too
painful, Charley! It is not at all a kind mood you are in today.'

'I don't want to pain you--you know I do not,' he said more gently.
'Only it just exasperates me--this you are going to do. I wish you
would not.'

'What?'

'Marry him. There, now I have showed you my true sentiments.'

'I must do it now,' said she.

'Why?' he asked, dropping the off-hand masterful tone he had hitherto
spoken in, and becoming earnest; still holding her arm, however, as if
she were his chattel to be taken up or put down at will. 'It is never
too late to break off a marriage that's distasteful to you. Now I'll
say one thing; and it is truth: I wish you would marry me instead
of him, even now, at the last moment, though you have served me so
badly.'

'O, it is not possible to think of that!' she answered hastily,
shaking her head. 'When I get home all will be prepared--it is ready
even now--the things for the party, the furniture, Mr. Heddegan's new
suit, and everything. I should require the courage of a tropical lion
to go home there and say I wouldn't carry out my promise!'

'Then go, in Heaven's name! But there would be no necessity for you to
go home and face them in that way. If we were to marry, it would have
to be at once, instantly; or not at all. I should think your affection
not worth the having unless you agreed to come back with me to Trufal
this evening, where we could be married by licence on Monday morning.
And then no Mr. David Heddegan or anybody else could get you away from
me.'

'I must go home by the Tuesday boat,' she faltered. 'What would they
think if I did not come?'

'You could go home by that boat just the same. All the difference
would be that I should go with you. You could leave me on the quay,
where I'd have a smoke, while you went and saw your father and mother
privately; you could then tell them what you had done, and that I
was waiting not far off; that I was a schoolmaster in a fairly good
position, and a young man you had known when you were at the Training
College. Then I would come boldly forward; and they would see that it
could not be altered, and so you wouldn't suffer a lifelong misery by
being the wife of a wretched old gaffer you don't like at all. Now,
honestly; you do like me best, don't you, Baptista?'

'Yes.'

'Then we will do as I say.'

She did not pronounce a clear affirmative. But that she conse