He did not do so for many seconds, and she thought by his utter stillness that he must be listening to the wild throbbing of her heart.

Then at last, just as the tension of waiting was becoming unbearable and she was on the verge of piteous entreaty, he seated himself on the edge of the table and spoke.

“Well,” he said, “we have got to get at the root of this trouble somehow.  You don’t propose to throw me over without telling me why, I suppose?”

His voice was perfectly calm.  She even fancied that he was faintly smiling as he uttered the words, but she could not look at him to see.  She found it difficult enough to speak in answer.

“I know I am treating you very badly,” she said, wringing her clasped hands in her agitation.  “You—­of course you can make me marry you.  I’ve promised myself to you.  You have the right.  But if you will only—­only let me go, I am sure it will be much better for you too.  Because—­because—­I’ve found out—­I’ve found out—­that I don’t love you.”

It was the greatest effort she had ever made in her life.  She wondered afterwards how she had ever brought herself to accomplish it.  It was so hard—­so hideously hard—­to face him, this man who loved her so overwhelmingly, and tell him that he had failed to win her love in return.  And at the eleventh hour—­to treat him thus!  If he had taken her by the throat and wrung her neck, she would have considered him justified and herself but righteously punished.

But he did nothing of a violent nature.  He only sat there looking at her, and though she could not bring herself to meet his look she knew that it held no anger.

He did not speak, and she went on with a species of desperate pleading, because silence was so intolerable.  “It wouldn’t be right of me to—­to marry you and not tell you, would it?  It wouldn’t be fair.  It would be like marrying you under false pretences.  I only wish—­oh, I do wish—­that I had known sooner, when you first asked me.  I might have known.  I ought to have known!  But—­but—­somehow—­” she began to falter badly and finally concluded in a piteous whisper—­“I didn’t.”

“How did you find out?” he said.  His tone was still perfectly quiet; but he spoke judicially, as one who meant to have an answer.

But Dinah had no answer for him.  It was the very question to which there could be no reply.  Her fingers interlaced and strained against each other.  She stood mute.

“I think you can tell me that,” Eustace said.

She made a small but vehement gesture of negation.  “I can’t!” she said.  “It’s—­it’s—­private.”

“You mean you won’t?” he questioned.

She nodded silently, too distressed for speech.

He got to his feet with finality.  “That ends the case then,” he said.  “The appeal is dismissed.  You can give me no adequate reason for releasing you.  Therefore, I keep you to your engagement.”