“Marry you?” she exclaimed.

He bent over her, and he laughed softly in the darkness.  A mad impulse was upon him to kiss her, but he resisted it.

“Why not?  Does it sound so dreadful?”

She drew her fingers away slowly but with determination.

“I had hoped,” she said, “that you would have spared me this.”

“Spared you!” he repeated.  “I do not understand.  Spared you!”

She looked at him with flashing eyes.

“Oh, I suppose I ought to thank you,” she said, bitterly.  “Only I do not.  I cannot.  You were kinder when you joined with me and helped me to ignore—­that hateful moment.  That was much kinder.”

“Upon my honour, Mary,” Brooks declared, earnestly, “I do not understand you.  I have not the least idea what you mean.”

She looked at him incredulously.

“You have asked me to marry you,” she said.  “Why?”

“Because I care for you.”

“Care for me?  Does that mean that you—­love me?”

“Yes.”

She noted very well that moment’s hesitation.

“That is not true,” she declared.  “Oh, I know.  You ask me out of pity—­because you cannot forget.  I suppose you think it kindness.  I don’t!  It is hateful!”

A light broke in upon him.  He tried once more to take her hand, but she withheld it.

“I only half understand you, Mary,” he said, earnestly, “but I can assure you that you are mistaken.  As to asking you out of pity—­that is ridiculous.  I want you to be my wife.  We care for the same things—­we can help one another—­and I seem to have been very lonely lately.”

“And you think,” Mary said, with a curious side-glance at him, “that I should cure your loneliness.  Thank you.  I am very happy as I am.  Please forget everything you have said, and let us go.”

Brooks was a little bewildered—­and manlike a little more in earnest.

“For some reason or other,” he said, “you seem disinclined to take me seriously.  I cannot understand you, Mary.  At any rate you must answer me differently.  I want you to be my wife.  I am fond of you—­you know that—­and I will do my best to make you happy.”

“Thank you,” Mary said, hardly.  “I am sorry, but I must decline your offer—­absolutely.  Now, let us go, shall we?”

She would have risen, but he laid his hand firmly upon her shoulder.

“Not till I have some sort of explanation,” he said.  “Is it that you do not care for me, Mary?”

She turned round upon him with colour enough in her cheeks and a strange angry light burning in her eyes.

“You might have spared me that also,” she exclaimed.  “You are determined to humiliate me, to make me remember that hateful afternoon in my rooms—­oh, I can say it if I like—­when I kissed you.  I knew then that sooner or later you would make up your mind that it was your duty to ask me to marry you.  Only you might have done it by letter.  It would have been kinder.  Never mind.  You have purged your conscience, and you have got your answer.  Now let us go.”