“Well, I’m not going to be made a fool of by your father.  If we’re engaged, you know what it means.  Marriage.  If it doesn’t mean that, then I say we’ve no right to be engaged.”

Marguerite seemed to recoil at the last words, but she recovered herself.  And then, heedless of being in a public place, she drew off her glove, and drew the engagement ring from her finger, and held it out to George.  She could not speak.  The gesture was her language.  George was extremely staggered.  He was stupefied for an instant.  Then he took the ring, and under an uncontrollable savage impulse he threw it into the river.  He did not move for a considerable time, staring at the river in front.  Neither did she move.  At length he said in a cold voice, without moving his head: 

“Here’s Chelsea Pier.”

She got up and walked to the rail amidships.  He followed.  The steamer moored.  A section of rail slid aside.  The pier-keeper gave a hand to Marguerite, who jumped on to the pier.  George hesitated.  The pier-keeper challenged him testily: 

“Now then, are ye coming ashore or aren’t ye?”

George could not move.  The pier-keeper banged the rail to close the gap, and cast off the ropes, and the steamer resumed her voyage.

A minute later George saw Marguerite slowly crossing the gangway from the pier to the embankment.  There she went!  She was about to be swallowed up in the waste of human dwellings, in the measureless and tragic expanse of the indifferent town....  She was gone.  Curse her, with her reliability!  She was too reliable.  He knew that.  Her father could rely on her.  Curse her, with her outrageous, incredibly cruel, and unjust sense of duty!  She had held him once.  Once the sight of her had made him turn hot and cold.  Once the prospect of life without her had seemed unbearable.  He had loved her instinctively and intensely.  He now judged and condemned her.  Her beauty, her sweetness, her belief in him, her reliability—­these qualities were neutralized by her sense of duty, awful, uncompromising, blind to fundamental justice.  The affair was over.  If he knew her, he knew also himself.  The affair was over.  He was in despair.  His mind went round and round like a life-prisoner exercising in an enclosed yard.  No escape!  Till then, he had always believed in his luck.  Infantile delusion!  He was now aware that destiny had struck him a blow once for all.  But of course he did not perceive that he was too young, not ripe, for such a blow.  The mark of destiny was on his features, and it was out of place there....  He had lost Marguerite.  And what had he lost?  What was there in her?  She was not brilliant; she had no position; she had neither learning nor wit.  He could remember nothing remarkable that they had ever said to each other.  Indeed, their conversations had generally been rather banal.  But he could remember how they had felt, how he had felt, in their hours together....