"What's up?"
"Where did you get this?"
"Why? Have you seen it before?"
The question pointed out to David the need of wariness.
"No!" he answered. "Its shape rather struck me, that's all. The emblem of a conquest, I suppose?"
The invitation stumbled awkwardly from unaccustomed lips, but Marston noticed no more than the words. He was chewing the cud of a disappointment and answered with a short laugh:
"No! Rather of a rebuff. The lady tore her hand away in a hurry—the link on the bracelet was thin, I suppose. Anyway, that was left in my hand."
"You were proposing to her?"
"Well, hardly. I was married at the time."
There was a silence for some moments, during which Hilton slowly gathered into his mind a consciousness of the humiliation which Kate must have endured, and read in that the explanation of her words "I had to marry." Marston took up the tale, babbling resentfully of a nursery prudishness, but his remarks fell on deaf ears until he mentioned a withered flower, which he had found inside the locket. Then David's self control partially gave way. In imagination he saw Marston carelessly tossing the sprig aside and the touch of his fingers seemed to sully the love of which it was the token. The locket burned into his hand. Without a word he dropped it on to the floor, and ground it to pieces with his heel. A new light broke in upon Marston.