He was still silent.  It was not in human endurance to bear his contempt.  The warning of a coming outbreak began to show itself in her face.  He met it, beforehand, with an impenetrable front.  Feeling nervous about the interview, while he was waiting in the rose-garden—­now that he stood committed to it, he was in full possession of himself.  He was composed enough to remember that he had not put his pipe in its case—­composed enough to set that little matter right before other matters went any farther.  He took the case out of one pocket, and the pipe out of another.

“Go on,” he said, quietly.  “I hear you.”

She struck the pipe out of his hand at a blow.  If she had had the strength she would have struck him down with it on the floor of the summer-house.

“How dare you use me in this way?” she burst out, vehemently.  “Your conduct is infamous.  Defend it if you can!”

He made no attempt to defend it.  He looked, with an expression of genuine anxiety, at the fallen pipe.  It was beautifully colored—­it had cost him ten shillings.  “I’ll pick up my pipe first,” he said.  His face brightened pleasantly—­he looked handsomer than ever—­as he examined the precious object, and put it back in the case.  “All right,” he said to himself.  “She hasn’t broken it.”  His attitude as he looked at her again, was the perfection of easy grace—­the grace that attends on cultivated strength in a state of repose.  “I put it to your own common-sense,” he said, in the most reasonable manner, “what’s the good of bullying me?  You don’t want them to hear you, out on the lawn there—­do you?  You women are all alike.  There’s no beating a little prudence into your heads, try how one may.”

There he waited, expecting her to speak.  She waited, on her side, and forced him to go on.

“Look here,” he said, “there’s no need to quarrel, you know.  I don’t want to break my promise; but what can I do?  I’m not the eldest son.  I’m dependent on my father for every farthing I have; and I’m on bad terms with him already.  Can’t you see it yourself?  You’re a lady, and all that, I know.  But you’re only a governess.  It’s your interest as well as mine to wait till my father has provided for me.  Here it is in a nut-shell:  if I marry you now, I’m a ruined man.”

The answer came, this time.

“You villain if you don’t marry me, I am a ruined woman!”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.  Don’t look at me in that way.”

“How do you expect me to look at a woman who calls me a villain to my face?”

She suddenly changed her tone.  The savage element in humanity—­let the modern optimists who doubt its existence look at any uncultivated man (no matter how muscular), woman (no matter how beautiful), or child (no matter how young)—­began to show itself furtively in his eyes, to utter itself furtively in his voice.  Was he to blame for the manner in which he looked at her and spoke to her?  Not he!  What had there been in the training of his life (at school or at college) to soften and subdue the savage element in him?  About as much as there had been in the training of his ancestors (without the school or the college) five hundred years since.