Julia’s heart seemed to stop for a second, then it went on heavily as before, but she only asked, “Did you not get my letter, the one I wrote in Holland about that?”

“The one when you told me of your arrangements?  By the way you did not mention that you were going to Van de Greutz’s for the explosive, yes, I got that, but it was scarcely an answer.”

“I explained that it meant ‘no.’”

“In a postscript; you cannot answer a proposal of marriage in a postscript.”

There really does not seem sufficient ground to justify this statement, still she did not combat it.  “Can’t I?” she said.  “Then I will answer it now—­no.  It was good of you to offer, generous and honourable, but, of course, I should not accept.  I mean, I could not even if there had been any need, and, as you see, there was not a particle of need then, still less now.”

“No need, no,” he answered, and there was a new note in his voice; “it is not a case of necessity or anything of the sort.  Put all that nonsense of justice and honour and gratitude out of the question, you know that it does not come in.  I own it did weigh somewhat then, but now—­now I want the good comrade; I don’t deserve her, or a tithe of what she has done for me, but I can’t do without her—­herself, the corporal fact—­don’t you know that?”

“No,” Julia said; somehow it was all she could say.

“You don’t know it?  Then I’ll tell you.”  But he did not for she prevented him.

“Please don’t,” she said.  “You cannot really want me because you do not really know me.  Oh, no, you do not!”

“I think I do; I know enough to begin with; the rest of the ignorance you can remedy at your leisure.”

“My leisure is now,” she said; “I will tell you several things, I will tell you how I got the explosive.  I went as a cook and stole like a thief—­you could have got it as easily as I if you would have stooped as readily as I did.  You admire that?  Perhaps so, now, but you would not if you had seen it being done.  That is the sort of thing I do, and I will tell you the sort of thing I like.  The day I came home from Holland I did what I liked—­as soon as I reached London I went to Johnny Gillat, my dear old friend, who I love better than any one else in the world, and we had a supper of steak and onions in a back bedroom, and we enjoyed it—­you see what my tastes are?  Afterwards I heard how father had taken to drink and mother had got into debt—­you see what a nice family we are?”

But here Rawson-Clew stopped her.  “I knew something like this before,” he said; “the details are nothing; I do not see what it has to do with the matter.”

“It ought to have a lot,” she answered.  “But even if you do know it and a good deal more and realise it too, which is a different thing, there is still the other side.  I don’t know you, I don’t even know your name.”

Then he remembered that he must have signed that offer of marriage, as he signed all letters, and so left himself merely “H.  F. Rawson-Clew” to her.