“Let me go!” said Dot.

But still he held her.  “Dot,” he said again.  “I won’t hustle you any.  I swear I won’t hustle you.  But—­my dear, you’ll marry me some day.  Isn’t that so?”

Dot was silent.  She was straining against his arms, and yet he held her, not fiercely, not passionately, but with a mastery the greater for its very coolness.

“I’ll wait for you,” he said.  “I’ll wait three years.  I shall be twenty-five then, and you’ll be twenty-one.  But you’ll marry me then, Dot.  You’ll have to marry me then.”

“Have to!” flashed Dot.

“Yes, have to,” he repeated coolly.  “You are mine.”

“I’m not, Bertie!” she declared indignantly.  “How—­how dare you hold me against my will?  And you’re upsetting the apples too.  Bertie, you—­you’re a horrid cad!”

“Yes, I know,” said Bertie, an odd note of soothing in his voice.  “That’s what you English people always do when you’re beaten.  You hurl insults, and go on fighting.  But it’s nothing but a waste of energy, and only makes the whipping the more thorough.”

“You hateful American!” gasped Dot.  “As if—­as if—­we could be beaten!”

She had struggled vainly for some seconds and was breathless.  She turned suddenly in his arms and placed her hands against his shoulders, forcing him from her.  Bertie instantly changed his position, seized her wrists, drew them outward, drew them upward, drew them behind his neck.

“And yet you love me,” he said.  “You love yourself better, but—­you love me.”

His face was bent to hers, he looked closely into her eyes.  And—­perhaps it was something in his look that moved her—­perhaps it was only the realisation of her own utter impotence—­Dot suddenly hid her face upon his shoulder and began to cry.

His arms were about her in an instant.  He held her against his heart.

“My dear, my dear, have I been a brute to you?  I only wanted to make you understand.  Say, Dot, don’t cry, dear, don’t cry!”

“I—­I’m not!” sobbed Dot.

“Of course not,” he agreed.  “Anyone can see that.  But still—­darling—­don’t!”

Dot recovered herself with surprising rapidity.  “Bertie, you—­you’re a great big donkey!” She confronted him with wet, accusing eyes.  “What you said just now wasn’t true, and if—­if you’re a gentleman you’ll apologise.”

“I’ll let you kick me all the way downstairs if you like,” said Bertie contritely.  “I didn’t mean to hurt you, honest.  I didn’t mean to make you—­”

“You didn’t!” broke in Dot.  “But you didn’t tell the truth.  That’s why I’m angry with you.  You—­told—­a lie.”

“I?” said Bertie.

He had taken his arms quite away from her now.  He seemed in fact a little afraid of touching her.  But Dot showed no disposition to beat a retreat.  They faced each other in the old apple cupboard, as if it were the most appropriate place in the world for a conflict.