“I thought I could marry you,” said Beatrice, strong, vigorously strong under a surface of sweet gentleness. “I find I can’t. You’ll release me.”
“I will not!” exclaimed Peter, once more shiny with sweat and mopping industriously. “And I want you to tell your father that I absolutely refused to release you—that I insisted on your marrying me.”
“My father?” said the girl wonderingly. “What has he got to do with it?”
Peter was winded for the moment. He recovered quickly, hastened to explain: “I—I’ve the highest respect for your father. I wouldn’t like him to think for a minute that I was careless about my word—or that I wasn’t bent and determined to marry you. I want you to understand, Beatrice. I hold you to your promise.”
“As I’ve told you, I love another man,” said Beatrice. “I thought I was getting over it. I find it was simply a fit of the blues.” She smiled absently. “I ran across an old pipe of his that I had locked in a drawer—a horrid, smelly, old pipe. And—Peter, were you ever in love?”
“With you,” said he, sullen and jealous—and certainly her expression, her tone, were not soothing to his vanity, fine and beautiful though they were in themselves.
She laughed. “Your grandmother!” mocked she. “That pipe—it was like one of those enchanted things in The Arabian Nights. It made me see”—her eyes grew fascinatingly tender and dreamy—“and see—and see!... Could you marry a woman who felt like that about another man?”
“Then why did you engage yourself to me?”
“Because he won’t have me,” confessed she, her old-time pride in her love rampant.
“I never heard such rot!” exclaimed he in disgust.