"She sent for me," apologized he. "I went. We came together with a bang. She told me I wanted to marry you; I told her YOU wanted to marry ME. She told me I was low; I told her she was a fraud. She said I was insolent; I said good-afternoon. If I hadn't marched out rather quickly I guess she'd have had me thrown out."
Margaret was sitting stone-still, her hands limp in her lap.
"So you see it's all up," continued he, with a curious air of bravado, patently insincere. "And it's just as well. You oughtn't to marry me. It's a crime for me to have permitted things to go this far."
"Perhaps you are right," replied she slowly and thoughtfully. "Perhaps you are right."
He made one of his exclamatory gestures, a swift jerk around of the head toward her. He had all he could do to restrain himself from protesting, without regard to his pretenses to himself and to her. "Do you mean that, Maggie?" he asked with more appeal in his voice than he was conscious of.
"Never call me that again!" she cried. "It's detestable—so common!"
He drew back as if she had struck him. "I beg your pardon," he said with gentle dignity. "I shall not do it again. Maggie was my mother's name—what she was always called at home."
She turned her eyes toward him with a kind of horror in them. "Oh, forgive me!" she begged, her clasped hands upon his arm. "I didn't mean it at all—not at all. It is I that am detestable and common. I spoke that way because I was irritated about something else." She laid one hand caressingly against his cheek. "You must always call me Maggie—when—when "—very softly—"you love me very, very much. I like you to have a name for me that nobody else has."
He seized her hands. "You DO care for me, don't you?" he cried.
She hesitated. "I don't quite know," said she. Then, less seriously: "Not at all, I'm sure, when you talk of breaking the engagement. I WISH you hadn't seen grandmother!"