“Yes,” said she, “you could let him think you were in earnest, you could pose as his rival, you could pretend all that!  Not to me, I grant you!  Even you did not go quite so far as that; or was it that you knew that I should see through you?  You made up for it, however, the other night.  That I never, never, never shall forgive.  I, who had never seriously thought of accepting him, who was only hesitating in order to refuse him in the most deliberate and final manner imaginable—­I, to have the word put into my mouth—­by you!  I, who was going in any case, of my own accord, to be told to go—­by you!  One thing you will never know, Captain Clephane, and that is how nearly you drove me into marrying him just to spite you and his miserable mother.  I meant to do it, that night when I left you.  It would have served you right if I had!”

She did not rise.  She did not look at me again.  But I saw the tears standing in her eyes, one I saw roll down her cheek, and the sight smote me harder than her hardest word, though more words followed in broken whispers.

“It wasn’t because I cared ... that you hurt me as you did.  I never did care for him ... like that.  It was ... because ... you seemed to think my society contamination ... to an honest boy.  I did care for him, but not like that.  I cared too much for him to let him marry me ... to contaminate him for life!”

I repudiated the reiterated word with all my might.  I had never used it, even in my thoughts; it had never once occurred to me in connection with her.  Had I not shown as much?  Had I behaved as though I feared contamination for myself?  I rapped out these questions with undue triumph, in my heat, only to perceive their second edge as it cut me to the quick.

“But you were playing a part,” retorted Mrs. Lascelles.  “You don’t deny it.  Are you proud of it, that you rub it in?  Or are you going to begin denying it now?”

Unfortunately, that was impossible.  Tt was too late for denials.  But, driven into my last corner, as it seemed, I relapsed for the moment into thought, and my thoughts took the form of a rapid retrospect of all the hours that this angry woman and I had spent together.  I was introduced to her again by poor Bob.  I recognised her again by the light of a match, and accosted her next morning in the strong sunshine.  We went for our first walk together.  We sat together on the green ledge overlooking the glaciers, and first she talked about herself, and then we both talked about Bob, and then Bob appeared in the flesh and gave me my disastrous idea.  Then there was the day on the Findelen that we had all three spent together.  Then there was the walk home from early church (short as it had been), the subsequent expedition to Zermatt and back, with its bright beginning and its clouded end.  Up to that point, at all events, they had been happy hours, so many of them unburdened by a single thought of Bob Evers and his folly, not one of them haunted by the usual sense of a part that is played.  I almost wondered as I realised this.  I supposed it would be no use attempting to express myself to Mrs. Lascelles, but I felt I must say something before I went, so I said: