“Will you listen to me?” he said.  “Give me a hearing—­just for a minute?  You have forgiven so much in me that is really bad that I can’t feel this last to be—­quite unpardonable.  Juliet, I haven’t really wronged you.  You have got a false impression of the man who wrote those books.  It’s a prejudice which I have promised myself to overcome.  But I must have time.  Will you defer judgment—­for my sake—­till you have read this latest book, written when you first came into my life?  Will you—­Juliet, will you have patience till I have proved myself?”

She shivered as she stood.  “You don’t know—­what you have done,” she said.

He made a quick gesture of protest.  “Yes, I do know.  I know quite well.  I have hurt you, deceived you.  But hear my defence anyway!  I never meant to marry you in the first place without telling you, but I always wanted you to read this book of mine first.  It’s different from the others.  I wanted you to see the difference.  But then I got carried away as you know.  I loved you so tremendously.  I couldn’t hold myself in.  Then—­when you came to me in my misery—­it was all up with me, and I fell.  I couldn’t tell you then, Juliet, I wasn’t ready for you to know.  So I waited—­till the book could be published and you could read it.  I am infernally sorry you found out like this.  I wanted you—­so badly—­to read it with an open mind.  And now—­whichever way you look at it—­you certainly won’t do that.”

There was a whimsical note in his voice despite its obvious sincerity as he ended, and Juliet winced as she heard it, and in a moment with resolution freed herself from his hold.

She did it in silence, but there was that in the action that deeply wounded him.  He stood motionless, looking at her, a glitter of sternness in his eyes.

“Juliet,” he said after a moment, “you are not treating this matter reasonably.  I admit I tricked you; but my love for you was my excuse.  And those books of mine—­especially the one I didn’t want you to read—­were never intended for such as you.”

She looked back at him with a kind of frozen wonder.  “Then who were they meant for?” she said.

He made a slight movement of impatience.  “You know.  You know very well.  They were meant for the people whom you yourself despise—­the crowd you broke away from—­men and women like the Farringmores who live for nothing but their own beastly pleasures and don’t care the toss of a halfpenny for anyone else under the sun.”

She went back against the table and stood there, supporting herself while she still faced him.  “You forget—­” she said, her voice very low,—­“I think you forget—­that they are my people—­I belong to them!”

“No, you don’t!” he flung back almost fiercely.  “You belong to me!”

A great shiver went through her.  She clenched her hands to repress it.  “I don’t see,” she said, “how I can—­possibly—­stay with you—­after this.”