She interrupted him quietly.

“Why more now than before?”

He dropped her hand as if stung, and turned away.  He knew he could not answer that to his own satisfaction, much less to hers.

“You’re a silly little baby,” he repeated resentfully.  “I think you had better go down now.  Missus will be wondering.”

Mary Ann’s sobs grew more spasmodic.  “You are going away without me,” she cried hysterically.

He went to the door again, as if apprehensive of an eavesdropper.  The scene was becoming terrible.  The passive personality had developed with a vengeance.

“Hush, hush!” he cried imperatively.

“You are going away without me.  I shall never see you again.”

“Be sensible, Mary Ann.  You will be—­”

“You won’t take me with you.”

“How can I take you with me?” he cried brutally, losing every vestige of tenderness for this distressful vixen.  “Don’t you understand that it’s impossible—­unless I marry you,” he concluded contemptuously.

Mary Ann’s sobs ceased for a moment.

“Can’t you marry me, then?” she said plaintively.

“You know it is impossible,” he replied curtly.

“Why is it impossible?” she breathed.

“Because—­” He saw her sobs were on the point of breaking out, and had not the courage to hear them afresh.  He dared not wound her further by telling her straight out that, with all her money, she was ridiculously unfit to bear his name—­that it was already a condescension for him to have offered her his companionship on any terms.

He resolved to temporise again.

“Go downstairs now, there’s a good girl; and I’ll tell you in the morning.  I’ll think it over.  Go to bed early and have a long, nice sleep—­missus will let you—­now.  It isn’t Monday yet; we have plenty of time to talk it over.”

She looked up at him with large appealing eyes, uncertain, but calming down.

“Do, now, there’s a dear.”  He stroked her wet cheek soothingly.

“Yessir,” and almost instinctively she put up her lips for a good-night kiss.  He brushed them hastily with his.  She went out softly, drying her eyes.  His own grew moist—­he was touched by the pathos of her implicit trust.  The soft warmth of her lips still thrilled him.  How sweet and loving she was!  The little dialogue rang in his brain.

“Can’t you marry me, then?”

“You know it is impossible.”

“Why is it impossible?”

“Because—­”

“Because what?” an audacious voice whispered.  Why should he not?  He stilled the voice but it refused to be silent—­was obdurate, insistent, like Mary Ann herself.  “Because—­oh, because of a hundred things,” he told it.  “Because she is no fit mate for me—­because she would degrade me, make me ridiculous—­an unfortunate fortune-hunter, the butt of the witlings.  How could I take her about as my wife?  How could she receive my friends?  For a housekeeper—­a good, loving housekeeper—­she is perfection, but for a wife—­my wife—­the companion of my soul—­impossible!”