"That might be different, but I don't know of any one who could. You couldn't. If you tried you'd only injure yourself without doing me any good."
"At the least, I could take you away from—from all this."
"No, because it's the sort of thing one can never leave behind. It's gone ahead of us. It will meet us at every turn. You and I—and papa—are probably by to-day a subject for gossip in half the clubs in New York. To-morrow it will be the same thing in London—at the club you call the Rag—and the Naval and Military—and your different Service clubs—"
To hide the renewal of his dismay he pooh-poohed this possibility. "As a mere nine days' wonder."
"Which isn't forgotten when the nine days are past. Long after they've ceased speaking of it they'll remember—"
"They'll remember," he interrupted, fiercely, "that I jilted you."
She colored hotly. "That you—what?"
He colored, too. The words were as much a surprise to him as to her. He had never thought of this view of the case till she herself summoned up the vision of his friends and enemies discussing the affair in big leather arm-chairs in big, ponderous rooms in Piccadilly or St. James's Square. It was what they would say, of course. It was what he himself would have said of any one else. He had a renewed feeling that retreat was cut off.
"If we're not married—if I go home without you—it's what'll be on everybody's lips."
"But it won't be true," she said, with a little gasp.