’You are too hard on me, Pratt.  You know that my only reason for seeking her is that I love her.’

’I do not mean to be hard.  But I have a very strong opinion that the quarrels of lovers, when they are of so very serious a nature, are a bad basis for the renewal of love.  Come, let us go and dress for dinner.  I am going to dine with Mrs Thorne, the millionaire, who married a country doctor, and who used to be called Miss Dunstable.’

‘I never dine out anywhere now,’ said Crosbie.  And then they walked out of the Park together.  Neither of them, of course, knew that Lily Dale was staying at the house at which Fowler was going to dine.

Lily, as she rode home, did not speak a word.  She would have given worlds to be able to talk, but she could not even make a beginning.  She heard Bernard and Siph Dunn chatting behind her, had hoped they would continue to do so till she was safe within the house.  They all used her well, for no one tried to draw her into conversation.  Once Emily said to her, ‘Shall we trot a little, Lily?’ And then they moved on quickly, and the misery was soon over.  As soon as she was upstairs in the house she got Emily by herself, and explained all the mystery in a word or two.  ’I fear I have made a fool of myself.  That was the man to whom I was once engaged.’  ‘What, Mr Crosbie?’ said Emily, who had heard the whole story from Bernard.  ’Yes, Mr Crosbie; pray do not say a word of it to anybody—­not even to your aunt.  I am better now, but I was such a fool.  No, dear; I won’t go into the drawing-room.  I’ll go upstairs, and come down ready for dinner.’

When she was alone she sat down in her habit and declared to herself that she certainly would never become the wife of Mr Crosbie.  I do not know why she should make such a declaration.  She had promised her mother and John Eames that she would not do so, and that promise would certainly have bound her without any further resolutions on her part.  But, to tell the truth, the vision of the man had disenchanted her.  When last she had seen him he had been as it were a god to her; and though, since that day, his conduct to her had been as ungodlike as it well might be, still the memory of the outward signs of his divinity had remained with her.  It is difficult to explain how it had come to pass that the glimpse which she had had of him should have altered so much within her mind;—­why she should so suddenly have come to regard him in an altered light.  It was not simply that he looked to be older, and because his face was careworn.  It was not only that he had lost that look of an Apollo which Lily had once in her mirth attributed to him.  I think it was chiefly that she herself was older, and could no longer see a god in such a man.  She had never regarded John Eames as being gifted with divinity, and had therefore always been making comparisons to his discredit.  Any such comparison now would tend quite the other way.  Nevertheless she would adhere to the two letters in her book.  Since she had seen Mr Crosbie she was altogether out of love with the prospect of matrimony.