'Now you are weak, Walter, trying to bring your delinquencies home to me,' she said, with the first touch of sharpness he had ever seen in her. 'It has been your own fault entirely all along, and I have never had a solitary bit of sympathy for you, and I don't know, either, what you meant by going on in any such manner.'
'I didn't understand it myself then; I seemed goaded on always to be a perfect brute when you came. But I believe I understand it now, and perhaps it would be better if I did not.'
He spoke with considerable agitation, which Gladys affected not to notice, while her white fingers touched the drooping blossoms tenderly, as if sympathising with them that their little day was over.
'Suppose you enlighten me, then?' she said, gaily still; then suddenly seeing his face, her own became very white.
'I don't dare,' he said hoarsely, 'it is too much presumption; but it will perhaps make you understand and feel for me more than you seem to do. Don't you see, Gladys, that it is my misery to care for you as happier men care for the woman they ask to marry them?'
There was a moment's strained silence, then Gladys spoke in a low, sobbing voice,—
'It is, as I said, Walter, too late, too late! I have promised to marry another man.'
