"It would have meant the end of everything."

"Oh, I don't see why!" she responded quickly.

"Don't you?" He stooped over her and took her two slight wrists in his. "Then I'll tell you. I love you and I want you for my wife. I didn't intend to speak so soon--you know so little of me. But this last hour! . . . I can't wait any longer. I want you, Nan, I want you so unutterably that I won't _take_ no."

She tried to rise from the sofa. But in an instant his arms were round her, pressing her back, tenderly but determinedly, against the cushions.

"No, don't get up! See, I'll kneel here beside you. Tell me, Nan, when will you marry me?"

She was silent. What answer could she give him--she who had found one man's love vain and betwixt whom and the man she really loved there was a stern barrier set?

At her silence a swift fear seized him.

"Nan," he said, his voice a little hoa.r.s.e. "Nan, is it--no good?"

Then, as she still made no answer, he let his arms fall heavily to his side.

"G.o.d!" he muttered. And his eyes held a blank, dazed look like those of a man who has just received a blow.

Nan caught him by the arm.

"No, no, Roger!" she cried quickly. "Don't look like that! I didn't mean--"

The sudden expression of radiance that sprang into his face silenced the remainder of the words upon her lips--the words of explanation that should have been spoken.

"Then you do care, after all! Nan, there's no one else, is there?"

"No," she said very low.

He stretched out his arms and drew her gently within them, and for a moment she had neither the heart nor the courage to wipe that look of utter happiness from his face by telling him the truth, by saying blankly: "I don't love you."

He turned her face up to his and, stooping, kissed her with sudden pa.s.sion.

"My dear!" he said, "my dear!" Then, after a moment:

"Oh, Nan, Nan, I can hardly believe that you really belong to me!"

Nan could hardly believe it either. It seemed just to have _happened_ somehow, and her conscience smote her. For what had she to give in return for all the love he was offering her? Merely a little liking of a lonely heart that wanted to warm itself at someone's hearth, and beyond that a terrified longing to put something more betwixt herself and Peter Mallory, to double the strength of the barrier which kept them apart. It wasn't giving Trenby a fair deal!

"Roger," she said, at last, "I don't think I'd better belong to you.

No, listen!"--as he made a sudden movement--"I must tell you. There _is_ someone else--only we can't ever be more than friends."

Roger stared, at her with the dawning of a new fear in his eyes. When he spoke it was with a savage defiance.

"Then don't tell me! I don't want to hear. You're mine now, anyway."

"I think I ought--" she began weakly.

But he brushed her scruples aside.

"I'm not going to listen. You've said you'll marry me. I don't want to hear anything about the other men who were. I'm the man who is.

And I'm going to drive you straight back to Mallow and tell everybody about it. Then I'll feel sure of you."

Faced by the irrevocableness of her action, Nan was overtaken by dismay. How recklessly, on the impulse of the moment, she had bartered her freedom away! She felt as though she were caught in the meshes of some net from which there was no escaping. A voice inside her head kept urging: "_Time_! _Time_! _Give me time_!"

"Please, Roger," she began with unwonted humility. "I'd rather you didn't tell people just yet."

But Trenby objected.

"I don't see that there's anything gained by waiting," he said doggedly.

"Time! . . . _Time_!" reiterated the voice inside Nan's head.

"To please me, Roger," she begged. "I want to think things over a bit first."

"It's too late to think things over," he answered jealously. "You've given me your promise. You don't want to take it back again?"

"Perhaps, when you know everything, you'll want me to."

"Tell me 'everything' now, then," he said grimly, "and you'll soon see whether I want you to or not."

Nan was fighting desperately to gain time. She needed it more than anything--time to think, time to weigh the pros and cons of the matter, time to decide. The past was pulling at her heart-strings, filling her with a sudden terror of the promise she had just given Roger.

"I can't tell you anything now," she said rather breathlessly. "I did try--a little while ago, and you wouldn't listen. You--you _must_ give me a few days--you must! If you don't, I'll say 'no' now--at once!"

her voice rising excitedly.

She was overwrought, strung up to such a pitch that she hardly knew what she was saying. She had been through a good deal in the last hour or two and Trenby realised it. Suddenly that grim determination of his to force her promise, to bind her his here and now, yielded to an overwhelming flood of tenderness.

"It shall be as you wish, Nan," he said very gently. "I know I'm asking everything of you, and that you're frightened and upset to-day.

I ought not to have spoken. And--and I'm a lot older than you."

"Oh, it isn't that," replied Nan hastily, fearing he might be feeling sore over the disparity in their respective ages. She did not want him to be hurt about things that would never have counted at all had she loved him.

"Well, if I wait till Monday--that's four days--will that do?" he asked.

"Yes. I'll tell you then."

"Thank you"--very simply. He lifted her hands to his lips. "And remember," he added desperately, "that I love you, Nan--you're my whole world."

He paced the short length of the room and back, and when he came to her side again, every trace of emotion was wiped out of his face.

"Now I'm going to take you back home. Mrs. Denman"--smiling faintly--"says she'll put 'an 'a.s.sock' in the car for your damaged leg to rest on, so with rugs and that coat you were so averse to bringing I think you'll be all right."

He went to the table and poured out something in a gla.s.s.

"Drink that," he said, holding it towards her. "It'll warm you up."

Nan sniffed at the liquid in the gla.s.s and tendered it back to him with a grimace.

"It's brandy," she said. "I hate the stuff."