e other."

"What are the three?"

"We might get married."

"Well?"

"One of the three I shall not tell you. And we might--make up our
minds to forget it all. Do what the people call, part. That is what I
suggest."

"So that you may spend your time in riding about with Lady George
Germain."

"That is nonsense, Guss. Lady George Germain I have seen three times,
and she talks only about her husband; a pretty little woman more
absolutely in love I never came across."

"Pretty little fool!"

"Very likely. I have nothing to say against that. Only, when you have
no heavier stone to throw against me than Lady George Germain, really
you are badly off for weapons."

"I have stones enough, if I chose to throw them. Oh, Jack!"

"What more is there to be said?"

"Have you had enough of me already, Jack?"

"I should not have had half enough of you if either you or I had fifty
thousand pounds."

"If I had them I would give them all to you."

"And I to you. That goes without telling. But as neither of us have got
the money, what are we to do? I know what we had better not do. We had
better not make each other unhappy by what people call recriminations."

"I don't suppose that anything I say can affect your happiness."

"Yes, it does; very much. It makes me think of deep rivers, and high
columns; of express trains and prussic acid. Well as we have known each
other, you have never found out how unfortunately soft I am."

"Very soft!"

"I am. This troubles me so that I ride over awfully big places,
thinking that I might perhaps be lucky enough to break my neck."

"What must I feel, who have no way of amusing myself at all?"

"Drop it. I know it is a hard thing for me to say. I know it will sound
heartless. But I am bound to say so. It is for your sake. I can't hurt
myself. It does me no harm that everybody knows that I am philandering
after you; but it is the very deuce for you." She was silent for a
moment. Then he said again emphatically, "Drop it."

"I can't drop it," she said, through her tears.

"Then what are we to do?" As he asked this question, he approached her
and put his arm round her waist. This he did in momentary vacillating
mercy,--not because of the charm of the thing to himself, but through
his own inability not to give her some token of affection.

"Marry," she said, in a whisper.

"And go and live at Dantzic for the rest of our lives!" He did not
speak these words, but such was the exclam