“No,” said Hone.  He spoke quickly, and, as he spoke, he leaned towards her.  A deep glow had begun to smoulder in his eyes.  “It’s something else that I’ve come to say—­something quite different.  I’ve come to tell you that you are all the world to me, that I love you with all there is of me, that I have always loved you.  Yes, you’ll laugh at me.  You’ll think me mad.  But if I don’t take this chance of telling you, I’ll never have another.  And even if it makes no difference at all to you, I’m bound to let you know.”

He ceased.  The fire that smouldered in his eyes had leaped to lurid flame; but still he held himself in check, he subdued the racing madness in his veins.  He was, as ever, her humble servant.

Perhaps she realized it, for she showed no sign of shrinking as she stood before him.  Her eyes grew a little wider and a little darker, that was all.

“I don’t know what to say to you, Major Hone,” she said, after a moment.  “I don’t know even what you expect me to say, since you expressly tell me that you are not trifling.”

“Faith!” he broke in impetuously.  “And is it trifling I’d be with the only woman I ever loved or ever wanted?  I’m not asking you to flirt.  I’m asking a bigger thing of you than that.  I’m asking you—­Princess, I’m asking you to stay—­and be my wife.”

He drew nearer to her, but he made no attempt to touch her.  Only the flame of his passion seemed to reach her, to scorch her, for she made a slight movement away from him.

She looked at him doubtfully.  “I still don’t know what to say,” she said.

His face altered.  With a mighty effort he subdued the fiery impulse that urged him to override her doubts and fears, to take and hold her in his arms, to make her his with or without her will.

He became in a trice the kindly, winning personality that all his world knew and loved.  “Sure then, you’re not afraid of me?” he said, as though he softly cajoled a child.  “It wouldn’t be yourself at all if you were, you that could tread me underfoot like a centipede and not be a mite the worse.”

She smiled a little, smiled and uttered a sudden quick sigh.  “Don’t you think you are rather a fool, Pat?” she said.  “I gave you credit for more shrewdness.  You certainly had more once.”

“What do you mean?” There was a sharp note of pain in Hone’s voice.

She moved restlessly across the room and paused with her back to him.  “None but a fool would conclude that because a woman is pretty she must be good as well,” she said, a tremor of bitterness in her voice.  “Why do you take it for granted in this headlong fashion that I am all that man could desire?”

“You are all that I want,” he said.

She shook her head.  “The woman who lived inside me died long ago,” she said, “and a malicious spirit took her place.”

“None but yourself would ever dare to say that to me,” said Hone.  “And I won’t listen even to you.  Princess—­”