Believing, as he did, that marriage was the goal of all women, even of the best, the immediate capitulation he had expected would have made matters far less difficult.  But these scruples of hers, so startlingly his own, her disquieting insight into his entire mental process had a momentary checking effect, summoned up the vague presage of a future that might become extremely troublesome and complicated.  His very reluctance to discuss with her the problem she had raised warned him that he had been swept into deep waters.  On the other hand, her splendid resistance appealed to him, enhanced her value.  And accustomed as he had been to a lifelong self-gratification, the thought of being balked in this supreme desire was not to be borne.  Such were the shades of his feeling as he listened to her.

“That’s nonsense!” he exclaimed, when she had finished.  “You’re a lady —­I know all about your family, I remember hearing about it when your father came here—­it’s as good as any in New England.  What do you suppose I care, Janet?  We love each other—­I’ve got to have you.  We’ll be married in the spring, when the rush is over.”

He drew her to him once more, and suddenly, in the ardour of that embrace, he felt her tenseness suddenly relax—­as though, against her will—­and her passion, as she gave her lips, vied with his own.  Her lithe body trembled convulsively, her cheeks were wet as she clung to him and hid her face in his shoulder.  His sensations in the presence of this thing he had summoned up in her were incomprehensible, surpassing any he had ever known.  It was no longer a woman he held in his arms, the woman he craved, but something greater, more fearful, the mystery of sorrow and suffering, of creation and life—­of the universe itself.

“Janet—­aren’t you happy?” he said again.

She released herself and smiled at him wistfully through her tears.

“I don’t know.  What I feel doesn’t seem like happiness.  I can’t believe in it, somehow.”

“You must believe in it,” he said.

“I can’t,—­perhaps I may, later.  You’d better go now,” she begged.  “You’ll miss your train.”

He glanced at the office clock.  “Confound it, I have to.  Listen!  I’ll be back this evening, and I’ll get that little car of mine—­”

“No, not to-night—­I don’t want to go—­to-night.”

“Why not?”

“Not to-night,” she repeated.

“Well then, to-morrow.  To-morrow’s Sunday.  Do you know where the Boat Club is on the River Boulevard?  I’ll be there, to-morrow morning at ten.  I’d come for you, to your house,” he added quickly, “but we don’t want any one to know, yet—­do we?”

She shook her head.

“We must keep it secret for a while,” he said.  “Wear your new dress—­the blue one.  Good-bye—­sweetheart.”