“Always?” I repeated, rather fatuously.

“Nearly always, ever since you have been a man.”

I was incapable of taking advantage of the opening, if it were one.  She was baffling.

“A man likes to succeed in his profession, of course,” I said.

“And you made up your mind to succeed more deliberately than most men.  I needn’t ask you if you are satisfied, Hugh.  Success seems to agree with you,—­although I imagine you will never be satisfied.”

“Why do you say that?” I demanded.

“I haven’t known you all your life for nothing.  I think I know you much better than you know yourself.”

“You haven’t acted as if you did,” I exclaimed.

She smiled.

“Have you been interested in what I thought about you?” she asked.

“That isn’t quite fair, Nancy,” I protested.  “You haven’t given me much evidence that you did think about me.”

“Have I received much encouragement to do so?” she inquired.

“But you haven’t seemed to invite—­you’ve kept me at arm’s length.”

“Oh, don’t fence!” she cried, rather sharply.

I had become agitated, but her next words gave me a shock that was momentarily paralyzing.

“I asked you to come here to-day, Hugh, because I wished you to know that I have made up my mind to marry Hambleton Durrett.”

“Hambleton Durrett!” I echoed stupidly.  “Hambleton Durrett!”

“Why not?”

“Have you—­have you accepted him?”

“No.  But I mean to do so.”

“You—­you love him?”

“I don’t see what right you have to ask.”

“But you just said that you invited me here to talk frankly.”

“No, I don’t love him.”

“Then why, in heaven’s name, are you going to marry him?”

She lay back in her chair, regarding me, her lips slightly parted.  All at once the full flavour of her, the superfine quality was revealed after years of blindness.—­Nor can I describe the sudden rebellion, the revulsion that I experienced.  Hambleton Durrett!  It was an outrage, a sacrilege!  I got up, and put my hand on the mantel.  Nancy remained motionless, inert, her head lying back against the chair.  Could it be that she were enjoying my discomfiture?  There is no need to confess that I knew next to nothing of women; had I been less excited, I might have made the discovery that I still regarded them sentimentally.  Certain romantic axioms concerning them, garnered from Victorian literature, passed current in my mind for wisdom; and one of these declared that they were prone to remain true to an early love.  Did Nancy still care for me?  The query, coming as it did on top of my emotion, brought with it a strange and overwhelming perplexity.  Did I really care for her?  The many years during which I had practised the habit of caution began to exert an inhibiting pressure.  Here was a situation, an opportunity suddenly thrust upon me which might never return, and which I was utterly unprepared to meet.  Would I be happy with Nancy, after all?  Her expression was still enigmatic.