“It’s no good saying that,” she replied; “things don’t come when you expect them to.  It surely can’t be right for people to marry when they are only hoping that one of them may love the other.”

“But you seem to forget the position I’m offering you,” he said.  “Is that no inducement?”

“No; I’m not forgetting it.  But do you think position is everything to a woman?”

“No; but she likes a home.”

“Then why do you think I gave up mine?”

“I didn’t know you had given it up.  I thought you had been compelled to earn your living.”

“No; not at all.  My father was a clergyman down in Kent.  He only died last year.  My mother still lives there and my two sisters.  I could have a home there if I wished to go back to it.”

He looked at her in a little amazement.  “I suppose I don’t understand women,” he said genuinely.

She looked up into his uninteresting face—­the weak, protruding lower lip, the drooping moustache that hung on to it—­then she smiled.

“I suppose, really, you don’t,” she agreed.  “I think we’ll go back; I’m getting cold.”

They walked back silently together, all the night sounds of the river soothing to her ears, jarring to his.  A train rushed by, thundering over the bridge from Gunnersbury way; he looked at it, frowning, waiting for the noise to cease; she watched it contentedly, thinking that it had come from the Temple where Traill was a barrister-at-law.

“Then I suppose it’s no good my saying any more,” said Mr. Arthur, as he stood at the door with his latch-key ready in the lock.  He waited for her answer before he turned it.

“No, no good,” she replied gently; “I’m so sorry, but it isn’t.  I hope it won’t be the cause of any unfriendliness; you have been very good to me, and I do really appreciate the honour of it.”  The same phrases, with but little variation, that every woman uses.  It is an understood thing amongst them that a man is conscious of paying them honour when he asks them in marriage, and that it is better to show him that they are sensitive to it.  He thinks of nothing of the kind—­certainly not at the time.  That last appreciation of the honour is the final application of a caustic to the wound that smarts the most of all—­though in the end it may heal.

Mr. Arthur turned the key viciously in the lock, and pushed the door open.

“I suppose you have to say that,” he exclaimed, “but of course there’s no honour about it to you.  If your father was a clergyman, you probably look down on me.  My father was in the grocery business.  He got me into the bank because he had an account there.”

He stood by to let her pass him into the hall.

“You’re really quite wrong,” she began, then she saw that he was not following her.  “I thought you were coming in,” she said.

“No; I’m not coming in yet.  Good night.”

He closed the door behind him, and left her abruptly in the darkness of the hall.