She set down the teapot and again she laughed softly.  In her plain black gown, very simple, adorned only by the little white bow at her neck, quakerlike and spotless, with the added color in her cheeks, too, which seemed to have come there during the last few moments, she was a very alluring person.

“He can’t,” she declared.  “He is married already.”

Then there came to Tavernake an inspiration, an inspiration so wonderful that he gripped the sides of his chair and sat up.  Here, after all, was the way out for him, the way out from his garden of madness, the way to escape from that mysterious, paralyzing yoke whose burden was already heavy upon his shoulders.  In that swift, vivid moment he saw something of the truth.  He saw himself losing all his virility, the tool and plaything of this woman who had bewitched him, a poor, fond creature living only for the kind words and glances she might throw him at her pleasure.  In those few seconds he knew the true from the false.  Without hesitation, he gripped with all the colossal selfishness of his unthinking sex at the rope which was thrown to him.

“Well, then, I do,” he said firmly.  “Will you marry me, Beatrice?”

She threw her head back and laughed, laughed long and softly, and Tavernake, simple and unversed in the ways of women, believed that she was indeed amused.

“Neither you nor any one else, dear Leonard!” she exclaimed.

“But I want you to,” he persisted.  “I think that you will.”

There was coquetry now in the tantalizing look she flashed him.

“Am I, too, then, one of these things to be attained in your life?” she asked.  “Dear Leonard, you mustn’t say it like that.  I don’t like the look of your jaw.  It frightens me.”

“There is nothing to be afraid of in marrying me,” he answered.  “I should make you a very good husband.  Some day you would be rich, very rich indeed.  I am quite sure that I shall succeed, if not at once, very soon.  There is plenty of money to be made in the world if one perseveres.”

She had the air of trying to take him seriously.

“You sound quite convincing,” she admitted, “but I do wish that you would put all these thoughts out of your mind, Leonard.  It doesn’t sound like you in the least.  Remember what you told me that first night; you assured me that women had not the slightest part in your life.”

“I have changed,” he confessed.  “I did not expect anything of the sort to happen, but it has.  It would be foolish of me to deny it.  I have been all my life learning, Beatrice,” he continued, with a sudden curious softness in his tone, “and yet, somehow or other, it seems to me that I never knew anything at all until lately.  There was no one to direct me, no one to show me just what is worth while in life.  You have taught me a great deal, you have taught me how little I know.  And there are things,” he went on, solemnly, “of which I am afraid, things which I do not begin even to understand.  Can’t you see how it is with me?  I am really very ignorant.  I want some one who understands; I want you, Beatrice, very badly.”