“Gyp, I swear to you there’s nothing but one kiss, and that was not—­”

A shudder went through her from head to foot; she cried out: 

“Oh, please go away!”

He went up to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and said: 

“It’s only you I really love.  I swear it!  Why don’t you believe me?  You must believe me.  You can’t be so wicked as not to.  It’s foolish—­foolish!  Think of our life—­think of our love—­think of all—­” Her face was frozen; he loosened his grasp of her, and muttered:  “Oh, your pride is awful!”

“Yes, it’s all I’ve got.  Lucky for you I have it.  You can go to her when you like.”

“Go to her!  It’s absurd—­I couldn’t—­If you wish, I’ll never see her again.”

She turned away to the glass.

“Oh, don’t!  What is the use?”

Nothing is harder for one whom life has always spoiled than to find his best and deepest feelings disbelieved in.  At that moment, Summerhay meant absolutely what he said.  The girl was nothing to him!  If she was pursuing him, how could he help it?  And he could not make Gyp believe it!  How awful!  How truly terrible!  How unjust and unreasonable of her!  And why?  What had he done that she should be so unbelieving—­should think him such a shallow scoundrel?  Could he help the girl’s kissing him?  Help her being fond of him?  Help having a man’s nature?  Unreasonable, unjust, ungenerous!  And giving her a furious look, he went out.

He went down to his study, flung himself on the sofa and turned his face to the wall.  Devilish!  But he had not been there five minutes before his anger seemed childish and evaporated into the chill of deadly and insistent fear.  He was perceiving himself up against much more than a mere incident, up against her nature—­its pride and scepticism—­yes—­and the very depth and singleness of her love.  While she wanted nothing but him, he wanted and took so much else.  He perceived this but dimly, as part of that feeling that he could not break through, of the irritable longing to put his head down and butt his way out, no matter what the obstacles.  What was coming?  How long was this state of things to last?  He got up and began to pace the room, his hands clasped behind him, his head thrown back; and every now and then he shook that head, trying to free it from this feeling of being held in chancery.  And then Diana!  He had said he would not see her again.  But was that possible?  After that kiss—­after that last look back at him!  How?  What could he say—­do?  How break so suddenly?  Then, at memory of Gyp’s face, he shivered.  Ah, how wretched it all was!  There must be some way out—­some way!  Surely some way out!  For when first, in the wood of life, fatality halts, turns her dim dark form among the trees, shows her pale cheek and those black eyes of hers, shows with awful swiftness her strange reality—­men would be fools indeed who admitted that they saw her!