"No—that sees itself! May I ask whether it was you or he who proposed this elopement?"
"Oh, how dare you!" she said, jumping up; "you have no right to insult me like this."
He caught her wrist. "Sit down, you little firebrand," he said. "I gather that he proposed it. You, at any rate, consented, no doubt after the regulation amount of proper scruples. It's all very charming and idyllic and—what are you crying for? Your lost hopes of a happy life with a boy you know nothing of, a boy you've hardly seen, a boy you've never talked to about anything but love's young dream?"
"I'm not crying," she said passionately, turning her streaming eyes on him, "you know I'm not—or if I am, it's only with rage. You may be a doctor—though I don't believe you are—but you're not a gentleman. Not anything like one!"
"I suppose not," he said; "a gentleman would not make conditions. I'm going to make one. You can't go to Harry, because his Mother would be seriously annoyed if you did; and so, believe me, would he—though you don't think it. You can get up and leave me, and go 'away into the night,' like a heroine of fiction—but you can't keep on going away into the night for ever and ever. You must have food and clothes and lodging. And the sun rises every day. You must just quietly and dully go home again. And you can't do it without me. And I'll help you if you'll promise not to see Harry, or write to him for a year."
"He'll see me. He'll write to me," she said with proud triumph.
"I think not. I exacted the promise from him as a condition of my coming to meet you."
"And he promised?"
"Evidently."