Instantly she caught me up, with a little laugh. "Why should you take it for granted that I am going to 'settle down' anywhere?"
"Oh," said I, rather embarrassed at this direct attack, "I—er—was told that Mr. van Buren had been lucky enough to persuade you to live in Rotterdam."
"Never!" exclaimed Freule Menela, deeply interested in this conversation about herself. "I will never live in Rotterdam!"
"But," I ventured, with an air of eagerness, "if you should marry a man whose interests are in Rotterdam——"
"It isn't at all decided that I shall marry such a man," she answered sharply.
"Not decided?" I repeated anxiously. "Look here, you know, I don't think it's fair to other men that it should be taken for granted you're engaged, if you're not really."
"Why should it matter to other men?" asked the lady.
"Oh, well, it might, you see. There might—er—be some man who met you for the first time after he'd heard of your engagement, and who for his own peace of mind didn't dare let himself admire your brilliant talents as much as he would like to."
Now, I had got as far as I intended to go. Some dim idea of rescuing the Viking from the girl he doesn't love, to give him to the girl he does (and I do), had been floating in my mind ever since that stormy night at Enkhuisen. I had thought that Freule Menela was the sort of girl who might drop the meat for the sake of the shadow; but having indicated the presence of a floating, ghostly shadow—which might belong to any one or no one—I had no idea of advancing further, even to bestow happiness on Phyllis.
I had argued with my conscience, "If she's a woman who's ready to throw over the man she's engaged to, just because he isn't very rich or particularly eligible in her eyes, and because some other vague person looming on the horizon has more money than Number One, why, it's a sure sign that she accepted Number One because she couldn't get any one else, therefore she doesn't deserve to keep him, and she does deserve not only to see him slip away, but to see the shadow go with him."