"No; but you can stay away yourself. You don't have to be in this play. Something else will turn up. You can afford to wait."
"But that's just the point—I can't! And, besides, think how silly and childish it would be for me to refuse a wonderful chance for a professional début that might not come again in years."
"But don't you see, Miss Nell, you are in honor bound not to go on with this?"
"Honor bound? How do you mean?"
"Why, to Queen Vic."
"I agreed to break my engagement with Harold Phipps and not to answer any of his letters. I've kept my promise."
"Yes; but I thought, and I made her think, that you agreed not to see him or have anything to do with him for six months."
"Well, the time will be up in six weeks."
"Lots can happen in six weeks."
If Quin had been wise he would have taken another tack; but, in his earnest effort to make her see her duty to Madam, he failed to press his own more personal claims, and thus lost his one chance of reaching her.