“A promise—­” she faltered.

Still he did not look up.  He was watching the stones with eyes half-shut.

“Yes,” he said, after a moment.  “I will let you go on the sole condition that you give me this promise.”

She began to tremble a little.  “What is it?” she whispered.

He glanced at her momentarily, but his expression was enigmatical.  She felt as if his look lighted and dwelt upon something beyond her.

“Simply this,” he said.  “You’ll laugh, I daresay; but if you are able to laugh it won’t hurt you to promise.  I want your word of honour that if you ever change your mind about marrying me, you will come to me like a brave woman and tell me so.”

Thus, quite calmly, he made known to her his condition, and in the amazed silence with which she received it he continued to flash hither and thither the wonderful rays that shone from the gems upon her hand.  He did not appear to be greatly concerned as to what her answer would be.  Simply with an inscrutable countenance he waited for it.

“Is it a bargain?” he asked at last.

She started with an involuntary gesture of shrinking.  “Oh, no, Nick!  How could I promise you that?  You know I shall never change my mind.”

He raised his eyebrows ever so slightly.  “That isn’t the point under discussion.  If it’s an impossible contingency, it costs you the less to promise.”

He kept her hand in his as he said it, though she fidgeted to be free.  “Please, Nick,” she said earnestly, “I would so much rather not.”

“You prefer to marry me at once?” he asked, and suddenly it seemed to her that this was the alternative to which he meant to drive her.

She rose in a panic, and he rose also, still keeping her hand.  His face looked like a block of yellow granite.

“Must it—­must it—­be one or the other?” she panted.

He looked at her under flickering eyelids.  “I have said it,” he remarked.

Her resistance flagged, sank, rose again, and finally died away.  After all, why should she hesitate?  What was there in such an undertaking as this to send the blood so wildly to her heart?

“Very well,” she said faintly at last.  “I promise.  But—­but—­I never shall change my mind, Nick—­never—­never.”

He was still looking at her with veiled, impenetrable eyes.  He paid no attention to her protest.  It was as if he had not so much as heard it.

“You’ve done your part,” he said.  “Now hear me do mine.  I swear to you—­before God—­that I will never marry you unless you ask me to.”

He bent with the words, and solemnly, reverently, he pressed his lips upon the hand he held.

Muriel waited, half-frightened still, and wholly awestruck.  She did not know Nick in this mood.

But when he straightened himself again, the old whimsical smile was on his face, and she breathed a sigh of relief.  With a quick, caressing movement he took her by the shoulders.