Well—­she wouldn’t have me.  She was most decided about it.  I had no hope and no defence and no appeal from her decision.  Unless I was prepared to be a bounder—­and a fatuous bounder at that—­I couldn’t tell her that she had given me encouragement that almost amounted to invitation.  To do her justice, until the dreadful moment in the taxi she hadn’t known that she had given me anything.  She confessed that she had been trying to convey to Reggie the impression that if her affections were engaged in any quarter it was in mine.  She had been so absorbed in calculating the effect on Reggie that she had never considered the effect on me.  She said she thought I knew what she was up to and that I was simply seeing her through.  She spoke of Jevons as if he was a joke—­a joke that might be disastrous if her family took it seriously.  It might end in her recall from town.  She intimated that there were limits even to Reggie’s enjoyment of the absurd; she owned quite frankly that she was afraid of Reggie—­afraid of what he might think of her and say to her; because, she said, she was so awfully fond of him.  As for me, and what I might think, it was open to me to regard her solitary stroll with Jevons as a funny escapade.

I do not believe the poor child was trying to throw dust in my eyes.  It was her own eyes she was throwing dust in.  She didn’t want to think of herself what she was afraid of Reggie thinking.

As to the grounds of my rejection (I was determined to know them), she was clear enough in her own little mind.  She liked me; she liked me immensely; she liked me better than anybody in the world but Reggie.  She admired me; she admired everything I did; she thought me handsome; I was the nicest-looking man she knew, next to Reggie.  But she didn’t love me.

“What’s more, Furny,” she said, “I can’t think why I don’t love you.”

I couldn’t see her clearly and continuously in the taxi.  The lamp-posts we passed on the way to Hampstead lit her up at short, regular intervals, and at short, regular intervals she faded and was withdrawn from me.  And in the same intermittent way, her soul, as she was trying to show it to me, was illuminated and withdrawn.

“I ought to love you,” she went on.  “I know I ought.  It would be the very best thing I could do.”

The folly in me clutched at that admission and gave tongue.  “If that’s so,” I said, “don’t you think you could try to do what you ought?”

The lamp-light fell on her then.  She was smiling a little sad, wise smile.  “No,” she said.  “No.  I think that’s why I can’t love you—­because I ought.”

And then she went on to explain that what she had against me was my frightful rectitude.

“You’re too nice for me, Furny, much too nice.  And ever so much too good.  I simply couldn’t live with integrity like yours.”  She paused and then turned to me full as we passed a lamp-post.

“I suppose you know my people would like me to marry you?”