"Certainly! but if I were to bid you to cut my throat, would you do it?"
"Was it not you who decided that we could not wait for each other?"
"And should it not have been for you to decide that you would wait?"
"You also would have married."
"It almost angers me that you should not see the difference. A girl unless she marries becomes nothing, as I have become nothing now. A man does not want a pillar on which to lean. A man, when he has done as you had done with me, and made a girl's heart all his own, even though his own heart had been flexible and plastic as yours is, should have been true to her, at least for a while. Did it never occur to you that you owed something to me?"
"I have always owed you very much."
"There should have been some touch of chivalry if not of love to make you feel that a second passion should have been postponed for a year or two. You could wait without growing old. You might have allowed yourself a little space to dwell—I was going to say on the sweetness of your memories. But they were not sweet, Frank; they were not sweet to you."
"These rebukes, Mabel, will rob them of their sweetness,—for a time."
"It is gone; all gone," she said, shaking her head,—"gone from me because I have been so easily deserted; gone from you because the change has been so easy to you. How long was it, Frank, after you had left me before you were basking happily in the smiles of Lady Mary Palliser?"
"It was not very long, as months go."