Her eyes widened with terror.  “Fred!” she gasped.  “What do you mean?”

“Precisely what I say,” said he, in the same cool, inevitable way.  “A man came to you with a story about me.  You listened.  A sufficient answer to the story was that I am marrying you.  That answer apparently does not content you.  Very well.  I shall make no other.”

She gazed at him uncertainly.  She felt him going—­and going finally.  She seized him with desperate fingers, cried:  “I am content.  Oh, Fred—­don’t frighten me this way!”

He smiled satirically.  “Are you afraid of the scandal—­because everything for the wedding has gone so far?”

“How can you think that!” cried she—­perhaps too vigorously, a woman would have thought.

“What else is there for me to think?  You certainly haven’t shown any consideration for me.”

“But you told me yourself that you were false to me.”

“Really?  When?”

She forgot her fear in a gush of rage rising from sudden realization of what she was doing—­of how leniently and weakly and without pride she was dealing with this man.  “Didn’t you admit——­”

“Pardon me,” said he, and his manner might well have calmed the wildest tempest of anger.  “I did not admit.  I never admit.  I leave that to people of the sort who explain and excuse and apologize.  I simply told you I was paying the expenses of a family named Hallowell.”

“But why should you do it, Fred?”

His smile was gently satirical.  “I thought Tetlow told you why.”

“I don’t believe him!”

“Then why this excitement?”

One could understand how the opposition witnesses dreaded facing him.  “I don’t know just why,” she stammered.  “It seemed to me you were admitting—­I mean, you were confirming what that man accused you of.”

“And of what did he accuse me?  I might say, of what do you accuse me?” When she remained silent he went on:  “I am trying to be reasonable, Josephine.  I am trying to keep my temper.”

The look in her eyes—­the fear, the timidity—­was a startling revelation of character—­of the cowardice with which love undermines the strongest nature.  “I know I’ve been foolish and incoherent, Fred,” she pleaded.  “But—­I love you!  And you remember how I always was afraid of that girl.”

“Just what do you wish to know?”

“Nothing, dear—­nothing.  I am not sillily jealous.  I ought to be admiring you for your generosity—­your charity.”

“It’s neither the one nor the other,” said he with exasperating deliberateness.

She quivered.  “Then what is it?” she cried.  “You are driving me crazy with your evasions.”  Pleadingly, “You must admit they are evasions.”

He buttoned his coat in tranquil preparation to depart.  She instantly took alarm.  “I don’t mean that.  It’s my fault, not asking you straight out.  Fred, tell me—­won’t you?  But if you are too cross with me, then—­don’t tell me.”  She laughed nervously, hiding her submission beneath a seeming of mocking exaggeration of humility.  “I’ll be good.  I’ll behave.”