He glanced at her to note the effect of his words. She had drawn her tall figure to its full height, and her cheeks were flushed and her eyes curiously bright. He had stabbed straight and deep into the heart of her weakness, but also into the heart of her pride.
The only effect of his thrust that was visible to him put him in a panic. "Don't—PLEASE don't look that way, Polly," he went on hastily. "You don't see what I'm driving at yet. I didn't mean that I'd marry her, or think of it. There isn't anybody but you. There couldn't be, you know that."
"Why did you tell me, then?" she asked haughtily.
"Because—I had to begin somewhere. Polly, I'm going away, going abroad. And I'm not to see you for—for I don't know how long—and—we must be married!"
She looked at him in a daze.
"We can cross on the ferry at half-past ten," he went on. "You see that house—the white one?" He pointed to the other bank of the river where a white cottage shrank among the trees not far from a little church. "Mr. Barker lives there—you must have heard of him. He's married scores and hundreds of couples from this side. And we can be back here at half-past eleven—twelve at the latest."
She shook her head expressed, not determination, only doubt.
"I can't, Jack," she said. "They——"
"Then you aren't certain you're ever going to marry me," he interrupted bitterly. "You don't mean what you promised me. You care more for them than you do for me. You don't really care for me at all."
"You don't believe that," she protested, her eyes and her mind on the little white cottage. "You couldn't—you know me too well."