It was plain that one of them must give way.  The woman had the most at stake—­and the woman set the example of submission.

“Don’t be hard on me,” she pleaded.  “I don’t mean to be hard on you. My temper gets the better of me.  You know my temper.  I am sorry I forgot myself.  Geoffrey, my whole future is in your hands.  Will you do me justice?”

She came nearer, and laid her hand persuasively on his arm.

“Haven’t you a word to say to me?  No answer?  Not even a look?” She waited a moment more.  A marked change came over her.  She turned slowly to leave the summer-house.  “I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Delamayn.  I won’t detain you any longer.”

He looked at her.  There was a tone in her voice that he had never heard before.  There was a light in her eyes that he had never seen in them before.  Suddenly and fiercely he reached out his hand, and stopped her.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

She answered, looking him straight in the face, “Where many a miserable woman has gone before me.  Out of the world.”

He drew her nearer to him, and eyed her closely.  Even his intelligence discovered that he had brought her to bay, and that she really meant it!

“Do you mean you will destroy yourself?” he said.

“Yes.  I mean I will destroy myself.”

He dropped her arm.  “By Jupiter, she does mean it!”

With that conviction in him, he pushed one of the chairs in the summer-house to her with his foot, and signed to her to take it.  “Sit down!” he said, roughly.  She had frightened him—­and fear comes seldom to men of his type.  They feel it, when it does come, with an angry distrust; they grow loud and brutal, in instinctive protest against it.  “Sit down!” he repeated.  She obeyed him.  “Haven’t you got a word to say to me?” he asked, with an oath.  No! there she sat, immovable, reckless how it ended—­as only women can be, when women’s minds are made up.  He took a turn in the summer-house and came back, and struck his hand angrily on the rail of her chair.  “What do you want?”

“You know what I want.”

He took another turn.  There was nothing for it but to give way on his side, or run the risk of something happening which might cause an awkward scandal, and come to his father’s ears.

“Look here, Anne,” he began, abruptly.  “I have got something to propose.”

She looked up at him.

“What do you say to a private marriage?”

Without asking a single question, without making objections, she answered him, speaking as bluntly as he had spoken himself: 

“I consent to a private marriage.”

He began to temporize directly.

“I own I don’t see how it’s to be managed—­”

She stopped him there.

“I do!”

“What!” he cried out, suspiciously.  “You have thought of it yourself, have you?”