Sir Julian let the rest alone.
"I don't know, quite, when I first realised that I—I had been making the people at the College talk," she said, and again she coloured. "It was only a few days ago that it began, and then I had that horrible feeling that everything was soundlessly working up to a crisis, and that sooner or later something must snap. You know?"
"Yes, I know."
"It was after Iris Easter's wedding, I think. And at first I was glad that it had come. Oh, you don't know, you can't imagine, what fools girls can be. How they can imagine and fancy and plan things, till it all seems true, and they try to go on into real life with the romance that they've been living in their dreams and fancies. And it doesn't come true. Mine didn't come true. Even if I was wrong and absolutely wicked even to let myself imagine what I did imagine, it was just as real to me as if things had been all right. It meant just as much to me as it does to a girl like Iris Easter, who knows that the man she cares for can ask her to marry him."
"Perhaps it meant more," said Sir Julian.
She gave him a glance of gratitude out of her shadow-encircled eyes.
"But when the people at the College suddenly began to watch—and talk—and look at me—then I thought that it was going to—to—well," said Miss Marchrose desperately, "to give me my chance."
"Tell me what happened."
"Nothing happened. Only, you see, at the end of twenty-four hours I saw that he was—well, just frightened. He didn't want there to be a crisis. He never had wanted it."
Sir Julian, who was Mark's friend, involuntarily paid tribute to the truth of her description. Mark had been afraid.