“And you don’t love him?” he said.

“No.”

“Respect him?”

She paused.  The pause answered him.  The tension of the moment lifted.

“Yes.  I respect him.  I know he’s honourable.  He must be reliable.  After all he’s offering me everything.”

You would have thought, to hear her, that the matter was yet in the balance, swaying uncertainly before it recorded the weight.  There is the instinct of the woman in that.  She felt the shadow of his apprehension; knew that she raised her value in his eyes by the seeming presence of debate.  Yet none realized better than she, that Mr. Arthur had been stripped of all possibility now.  The fateful comparison had been made—­the comparison which most women make in the decision of such momentous issues—­one man against another.  Their emotions are the agate upon which the scales must swing.  In favour of the man before her, they swung with ponderous obviousness.

“Then you’ll marry him?” said Traill.

She looked at him questioningly—­raised eyebrows—­the look of mute appeal.  You might have read anything behind her eyes—­you might have read nothing.  Traill studied them wonderingly.

“You’ll marry him—­of course,” he repeated.  He was taking the risk.  He might be forcing her to say yes.  He prepared himself for it.  To take that risk, knowing one way or another, rather than blindly groping to the end, this was typical of him.  But he could not force her to the answer that he sought for.

“Do you think I ought to?” she asked.

He drummed his fingers on the table and looked through her.

“Why do you ask me?”

“I’m sorry.”  She returned sensitively to the food that was before her—­“I thought you had seemed interested.  I’m sorry—­I took too much for granted.”

He knew the danger of all this—­so did she.  But danger of what?  That dancing upon the edge of the precipice of emotion is in the normal heart of every woman—­and he?  He sought it out; to the edge he had brought her, knowing the way—­every step of it.  She had only followed blindly where he had led.  Once there, she knew well the chasm on whose edge she was balancing.  Natural instinct alone would have told her that.  The height was dizzy.  She had known well that if ever she gazed down, it would be that.  Her head swam with the giddiness of it.  She kept her eyes fixed rigidly on the plate before her, not daring to look up, or meet his glance.

“Suppose you haven’t taken too much for granted,” he suggested quietly.

“Well?” she raised her head—­tried to look with unconcern into his eyes—­failed.  Then her head dropped again.

“I should say—­don’t marry him—­not yet—­wait.  The harm that is done by waiting is measurable by inches.  Wait.  How old are you?  Is that rude?  No—­of course it isn’t.  It’s only rude when a woman’s got to answer you with a lie.  How old are you?  Twenty?”