I thoroughly enjoyed the situation, but did not let this appear.  A minute or two passed and he did not speak.

“Mr Beecham, I’ll trouble you to explain yourself.  How dare you lay your hands upon me?”

“Explain!” he breathed rather than spoke, in a tone of concentrated fury.  “I’ll make you explain, and I’ll do what I like with you.  I’ll touch you as much as I think fit.  I’ll throw you over the fence if you don’t explain to my satisfaction.”

“What is there that I can explain?”

“Explain your conduct with other men.  How dare you receive their attentions and be so friendly with them!”

“How dare you speak to me like that!  I reserve the right of behaving as I please without your permission.”

“I won’t have a girl with my engagement ring on her finger going on as you do.  I think I have a right to complain, for I could get any amount of splendid women in every way to wear it for me, and behave themselves properly too,” he said fiercely.

I tossed my head defiantly, saying, “Loose your hold of me, and I’ll quickly explain matters to my own satisfaction and yours, Harold Beecham.”

He let me go, and I stepped a pace or two away from him, drew the costly ring from my finger, and, with indifference and contempt, tossed it to his feet, where the juice of crushed strawberries was staining the ground, and facing him, said mockingly: 

“Now, speak to the girl who wears your engagement ring, for I’ll degrade myself by wearing it no more.  If you think I think you as great a catch as you think yourself, just because you have a little money, you are a trifle mistaken, Mr Beecham, that is all.  Ha ha ha!  So you thought you had a right to lecture me as your future slave!  Just fancy!  I never had the slightest intention of marrying you.  You were so disgustingly conceited that I have been attempting to rub a little of it out of you.  Marry you!  Ha ha!  Because the social laws are so arranged that a woman’s only sphere is marriage, and because they endeavour to secure a man who can give them a little more ease, you must not run away with the idea that it is yourself they are angling for, when you are only the bothersome appendage with which they would have to put up, for the sake of your property.  And you must not think that because some women will marry for a home they all will.  I trust I have explained to your satisfaction, Mr Beecham.  Ha ha ha!”

The jealous rage had died out of his face and was succeeded by trembling and a pallor so ghastly, that I began to have a little faith in descriptions of love which I had hitherto ridiculed.

“Are you in earnest?” he asked in a deadly calm voice.

“Most emphatically I am.”