“No, no!” she retorted wildly.  “I am not glad!”

“I thought you”—­

“But there are conditions!  He says he will go with me anywhere, and we can practise our profession together, and I can carry out all my plans.  But first—­first—­he wants me to—­marry him!”

“Who?”

“Don’t you know?  Dr. Mulbridge!”

“That—­I beg your pardon.  I’ve no right to call him names.”  The young fellow halted, and looked at her downcast face.  “Well, do you want me to tell you to take him?  That is too much.  I did n’t know you were cruel.”

“You make me cruel!  You leave me to be cruel!”

“I leave you to be cruel?”

“Oh, don’t play upon my words, if you won’t ask me what I answered!”

“How can I ask that?  I have no right to know.”

“But you shall know!” she cried.  “I told him that I had no plans.  I have given them all up because—­because I’m too weak for them, and because I abhor him, and because—­But it was n’t enough.  He would not take what I said for answer, and he is coming again for an answer.”

“Coming again?”

“Yes.  He is a man who believes that women may change, for reason or no reason; and”—­

“You—­you mean to take him when he comes back?” gasped the young man.

“Never!  Not if he came a thousand times!”

“Then what is it you want me to advise you about?” he faltered.

“Nothing!” she answered, with freezing hauteur.  She suddenly put up her arms across her eyes, with the beautiful, artless action of a shame-smitten child, and left her young figure in bewildering relief.  “Oh, don’t you see that I love you?”

“Could n’t you understand,—­couldn’t you see what I meant?” she asked again that night, as they lost themselves on the long stretch of the moonlit beach.  With his arm close about that lovely shape they would have seemed but one person to the inattentive observer, as they paced along in the white splendor.

“I couldn’t risk anything.  I had spoken, once for all.  I always thought that for a man to offer himself twice was indelicate and unfair.  I could never have done it.”

“That’s very sweet in you,” she said; and perhaps she would have praised in the same terms the precisely opposite sentiment.  “It’s some comfort,” she added, with a deep-fetched sigh, “to think I had to speak.”

He laughed.  “You didn’t find it so easy to make love!”

“Oh, nothing is easy that men have to do!” she answered, with passionate earnestness.

There are moments of extreme concession, of magnanimous admission, that come but once in a lifetime.

XII.

Dr. Mulbridge did not wait for the time he had fixed for his return.  He may have judged that her tendency against him would strengthen by delay, or he may have yielded to his own impatience in coming the next day.  He asked for Grace with his wonted abruptness, and waited for her coming in the little parlor of the hotel, walking up and down the floor, with his shaggy head bent forward, and his big hands clasped behind him.