“She is coming now, Mr. Quentin.  You have but a moment of doubt left.  She despises you.”  For the first time his composure wavered, and his lips parted, as if to exclaim against such an assumption.  But Dorothy was already at the foot of the stairs, pale, cold and unfriendly.  She was the personification of a tragedy queen as she paused at the foot of the stairs, her nand on the newell post, the lights from above shining directly into a face so disdainful that he could hardly believe it was hers.  There was no warmth in her voice when she spoke to him, who stood immovable, speechless, before her.

“What have you to say to me, Phil?”

“I have first to ask if you despise me,” he found voice to say.

“I decline to answer that question.’’

“Your mother has said so.”

“She should not have done so.”

“Then she has misrepresented you?” he cried, taking several steps toward her.

“I did not say that she had.”

“Dorothy, what do you mean by this?  What right have you to—­” he began, fiercely.

“Mr. Quentin!” exclaimed Mrs. Garrison, haughtily.

“Well,” cried he, at bay and doggedly, “I must know the truth.  Will you come to the veranda with me, Dorothy?”

“No,” she replied, without a quaver.

“I must talk with you alone.  What I have to say is of the gravest importance.  It is for your welfare, and I shall leave my own feelings out of it, if you like.  But I must and will say what I came here to say.”

“There is nothing that I care to hear from you.”

“By all that’s holy, you shall hear it, and alone, too,” he exclaimed so commandingly that both women started.  He caught a quick flutter in Dorothy’s eyes and saw the impulse that moved her lips almost to the point of parting.  “I demand—­yes, demand—­to be heard Come!  Dorothy, for God’s sake, come!”

He was at her side and, before she could prevent it, had grasped her hand in his own.  All resistance was swept away like chaff before the whirlwind.  The elder woman so far forgot her cold reserve as to blink her austere eyes, while Dorothy caught her breath, looked startled and suffered herself to be led to the door without a word of protest.  There he paused and turned to Mrs. Garrison, whose thunderstruck countenance was afterward the subject of more or less amusement to him, and, if the truth were known, to her daughter.

“When I have said all that I have to say to her, Mrs. Garrison, I’ll bring her back to you.”

Neither he nor Dorothy uttered a word until they stood before each other in the dark palm-surrounded nook where, on one memorable night, he had felt the first savage blow of the enemy.

“Dorothy, there can no longer be any dissembling.  I love you.  You have doubtless known it for weeks and weeks.  It will avail you nothing to deny that you love me.  I have seen—­” he was charging, hastily, feverishly.