With the cold, quiet tones of one too strong, controlled, and well-bred to give way violently to his intense anger, he said:  “This is a different result from what you led me to expect.  All your smiles end in these unavailing tears.  Why did you smile so sweetly after you understood me, since you had nothing better in store?  I was giving you the homage, the choice of my whole manhood, and you knew it.  What were you giving me?  Why did your eyes draw out my heart and soul?  Do you think that such a man as I can exist without heart and soul?  Did you class me with Strahan, who can take a refusal as he would lose a game of whist?  No, you did not.  I saw in your very eyes a true estimate of Strahan and all his kind.  Was it your purpose to win a genuine triumph over a man who cared nothing for other women?  Why then don’t you enjoy it?  You could not ask for anything more complete.”

“Trample on me—­I deserve it,” she faltered.

After a moment’s pause, he resumed:  “I have no wish to trample on you.  I came here with as much loyalty and homage as ever a man brought to a woman in any age.  I have offered you any test of my love and truth that you might ask.  What more could a man do?  As soon as I knew what you were to me, I sought your father’s permission to win you, and I told you my secret in every tone and glance.  If your whole nature shrunk from me, as I see it does, you could have told me the truth months since, and I should have gone away honoring you as a true-hearted, honest girl, who would scorn the thought of deceiving and misleading an earnest man.  You knew I did not belong to the male-flirt genus.  When a man from some sacred impulse of his nature would give his very life to make a woman happy, is it too much to ask that she should not deliberately, and for mere amusement, wreck his life?  If she does not want his priceless gift, a woman with your tact could have revealed the truth by one glance, by one inflection of a tone.  Not that I should have been discouraged so easily, but I should have accepted an unspoken negative long since with absolute respect.  But now—­” and he made a gesture eloquent with protest and despair.

“But now,” she said, wearily, “I see it all in the light in which you put it.  Be content; you have spoiled my life as truly as I have yours.”

“Yes, for this evening.  There will be only one less in your drawing-room when you return.”

“Very well,” she replied, quietly.  Her eyes were dry and hot now, and he could almost see the dark lines deepening under them, and the increasing pallor of her face.  “I have only this to say.  I now feel that your words are like blows, and they are given to one who is not resisting, who is prostrate;” and she rose as if to indicate that their interview should end.

He looked at her uneasily as she stood before him, with her pallid face averted, and every line of her drooping form suggesting defeat rather than triumph; yes, far more than defeat—­the apathetic hopelessness of one who feels himself mortally wounded.