“I will speak to you, Willoughby, when I return from my walk with Miss Dale, soon after twelve.”

“Twelve!” said he

“I name an hour.  It seems childish.  I can explain it.  But it is named, I cannot deny, because I am a rather childish person perhaps, and have it prescribed to me to delay my speaking for a certain length of time.  I may tell you at once that Mr. Whitford is not to be persuaded by me, and the breaking of our engagement would not induce him to remain.”

“Vernon used those words?”

“It was I.”

“‘The breaking of our engagement!’ Come into the laboratory, my love.”

“I shall not have time.”

“Time shall stop rather than interfere with our conversation!  ’The breaking . . .’!  But it’s a sort of sacrilege to speak of it.”

“That I feel; yet it has to be spoken of”

“Sometimes?  Why?  I can’t conceive the occasion.  You know, to me, Clara, plighted faith, the affiancing of two lovers, is a piece of religion.  I rank it as holy as marriage; nay, to me it is holier; I really cannot tell you how; I can only appeal to you in your bosom to understand me.  We read of divorces with comparative indifference.  They occur between couples who have rubbed off all romance.”

She could have asked him in her fit of ironic iciness, on hearing him thus blindly challenge her to speak out, whether the romance might be his piece of religion.

He propitiated the more unwarlike sentiments in her by ejaculating, “Poor souls! let them go their several ways.  Married people no longer lovers are in the category of the unnameable.  But the hint of the breaking of an engagement—­our engagement!—­between us?  Oh!”

“Oh!” Clara came out with a swan’s note swelling over mechanical imitation of him to dolorousness illimitable.  “Oh!” she breathed short, “let it be now.  Do not speak till you have heard me.  My head may not be clear by-and-by.  And two scenes—­twice will be beyond my endurance.  I am penitent for the wrong I have done you.  I grieve for you.  All the blame is mine.  Willoughby, you must release me.  Do not let me hear a word of that word; jealousy is unknown to me . . .  Happy if I could call you friend and see you with a worthier than I, who might by-and-by call me friend!  You have my plighted troth . . . given in ignorance of my feelings.  Reprobate a weak and foolish girl’s ignorance.  I have thought of it, and I cannot see wickedness, though the blame is great, shameful.  You have none.  You are without any blame.  You will not suffer as I do.  You will be generous to me?  I have no respect for myself when I beg you to be generous and release me.”

“But was this the . . .”  Willoughby preserved his calmness, “this, then, the subject of your interview with Vernon?”

“I have spoken to him.  I did my commission, and I spoke to him.”

“Of me?”

“Of myself.  I see how I hurt you; I could not avoid it.  Yes, of you, as far as we are related.  I said I believed you would release me.  I said I could be true to my plighted word, but that you would not insist.  Could a gentleman insist?  But not a step beyond; not love; I have none.  And, Willoughby, treat me as one perfectly worthless; I am.  I should have known it a year back.  I was deceived in myself.  There should be love.”