"I am not engaged," he said more slowly.
"You have—some other engagement—entanglement—of which I do not know?"
"No, Cynthia."
"Then," she, said, facing him with a boldness which he thoroughly admired, "why do you want to draw back from what you said to me last night?"
Hubert looked more than serious—he looked unhappy.
"Draw back," he said slowly—"that is a hard expression!"
"It is a hard thing," she rejoined.
"Cynthia, if I had suspected—if you had ever given me any reason to suppose—that you were willing to think of me as more than a friend, I would not have spoken. I am not worthy of you; I can but drag you back from a brilliant career; it is not fair to you."
The girl stood regarding him meditatively; there was neither fear nor sign of yielding in her eyes.
"That does not sound natural," she said; "it does not sound quite real. Excuse me, but you would not, merely as a novelist, make your hero try to back out of an engagement for that reason. If he gave it, the reader would know at once there was something else—something in the background. I believe that the amiable heroine would accept the explanation and go away broken-hearted. But I," said Cynthia, with a little stamp of impatience—"I am not amiable, and I mean neither to believe in your explanation nor to break my heart; and so, Mr. Hubert Lepel, you had better tell me what this is really all about."