When they are in the garden, and still he has not spoken, she breaks the silence.
"What is it, Teddy?" she asks, lightly. "I am all curiosity. I never before saw you look so angry."
"'Angry'?—no,—I hardly think there is room for anger. I have brought you here to tell you—I will not keep to my engagement with you—an hour longer."
Silence follows this declaration,—a dead silence, broken only by the voices of the night and the faint, sweet, dreamy sound of one of Gungl's waltzes as it steals through the air to where they stand.
They have ceased to move, and are facing each other in the narrow pathway. A few beams from the illumined house fall across their feet; one, more adventurous than the rest, has lit on Molly's face, and lingers there, regardless of the envious moonbeams.
How changed it is! All the soft sweetness, the gladness of it, that characterized it a moment since, is gone. All the girlish happiness and excitement of a first ball have vanished. She is cold, rigid, as one turned to stone. Indignation lies within her lovely eyes.
"I admit you have taken me by surprise," she says, slowly. "It is customary—is it not?—for the one who breaks an engagement to assign some reason for so doing?"
"It is. You shall have my reason. Half an hour ago I stood at that window,"—pointing to it,—"and saw you in the shrubberies—with—Shadwell!"
"Yes? And then?"
"Then—then!" With a movement full of passion he lays his hands upon her shoulders and turns her slightly, so that the ray which has wandered once more rests upon her face. "Let me look at you," he says; "let me see how bravely you can carry out your deception to its end. Its end, mark you; for you shall never again deceive me. I have had enough of it. It is over. My love for you has died."