Nothing he could have said then would have lightened my heart.

I scribbled, “Yes,” on the same paper and gave it back to the girl.

When I said good night to my mother that night after the opera, I told her where I was going.  Peter was standing in the front hall and took me in a hansom to the lady’s house, saying he would wait for me round the corner while I had my interview with her.

It was past midnight and I felt overpoweringly tired.  My beautiful rival opened the front door to me and I followed her silently up to her bedroom.  She took off my opera-cloak and we sat down facing each other.  The room was large and dark but for a row of candles on the mantel-piece and two high church-lights each side of a silver pier-glass.  There was a table near my chair with odds and ends on it and a general smell of scent and flowers.  I looked at her in her blue satin nightgown and saw that she had been crying.

“It is kind of you to have come,” she said, “and I daresay you know why I wanted to see you to-night.”

Margot:  “No, I don’t; I haven’t the faintest idea!”

The lady (looking rather embarrassed, but after A moment’s pause): 
“I want you to tell me about yourself.”

I felt this to be a wrong entry:  she had sent for me to tell her about Peter Flower and not myself; but why should I tell her about either of us?  I had never spoken of my love-affairs excepting to my mother and my three friends—­Con Manners, Frances Horner, and Etty Desborough—­and people had ceased speaking to me about them; why should I sit up with a stranger and discuss myself at this time of night?  I said there was nothing to tell.  She answered by saying she had met so many people who cared for me that she felt she almost knew me, to which I replied: 

“In that case, why talk about me?”

The lady:  “But some people care for both of us.”

Margot (rather coldly):  “I daresay.”

The lady:  “Don’t be hard, I want to know if you love Peter Flower . ...  Do you intend to marry him?”

The question had come then:  this terrible question which my mother had never asked and which I had always evaded!  Had it got to be answered now ... and to a stranger?

With a determined effort to control myself I said: 

“You mean, am I engaged to be married?”

The lady:  “I mean what I say; are you going to marry Peter?”

Margot:  “I have never told him I would.”

The lady (very slowly):  “Remember, my life is bound up in your answer ...”

Her words seemed to burn and I felt a kind of pity for her.  She was leaning forward with her eyes fastened on mine and her hands clasped between her knees.

“If you don’t love him enough to marry him, why don’t you leave him alone?” she said.  “Why do you keep him bound to you?  Why don’t you set him free?”