"Let us go and sit down," he pleaded. "I want to look at you. I can't, I won't believe, that you don't mean ever to be my own girl any more."
"Algy, I do mean it—just as much for you as for myself."
They had reached the chairs and sat down, Lord Algy pushed his hat to the back of his head; his immaculately brushed hair glistened bronze in the setting sun, and his forehead was puckered with distress. His attractive eyes sought hers with a fond persistence. Katherine Bush was obliged to clench her hands tight in the pockets of her coat.
"Why, what in Heaven's name for? Why must we part?" he demanded fiercely. "Katherine, I have missed you awfully—I have not known what to do with myself—and before this bother fell upon me, I had determined to come up to ask you to marry me—we'd be awfully happy married, darling—like we were in Paris. I have never loved anything half so much as our time together."
"It is dear of you to say that, but I would not marry you for anything in the world, it would spoil everything, destroy a memory that has not got any flaw in it.—Listen to me, Algy—I went with you because I wanted to—I wanted to understand life, and find out what is worth while, and what men are like. I am only at the beginning of existence and I intend to learn most of its meaning before I die. I thought that whatever cold, tiresome path I might have to follow afterwards, to carry out my scheme of things, I would at least have some good hours to remember with you, so I went deliberately—but I never meant to do it again. Let's both be grateful for what we have had and part friends."
"I simply can't," protested Lord Algy, growing more and more full of emotion, as he felt the attainment of his desires receding from him. "I call it awfully cold-blooded of you, Katherine, and I can't and won't consent to it. I want you—I want you now—to-night," and he stretched out his arms. "I am sick with longing for you—I mean it, darling. I have been away with other girls often before, Jack Kilcourcy and I stayed down the river with Laure de Laine and Mary Green this June. Laure was my friend, and she simply wasn't a patch on you, pet, in any way, and I didn't care a straw when it was over, although they are such celebrities, and it did make Berty Aberhams so mad, and was such a score off the bounder. I have never felt anything like I feel for you, darling—I want you to be my wife."
As he spoke, something withered a little in Katherine Bush; his unconscious placing of the affair galled her, although she knew that it was perfectly just; she had gone with him under no other pretence than had gone those ladies of the Frivolity Theatre. She analysed his simple directness, and appreciated the triumph conveyed to her in the final expression of his feelings, but it made her task rather easier. She saw so plainly what a renewal of their relations would mean. She looked and looked at him, seated dejectedly there beside her, and then she spoke, and her voice was full of quiet determination and very deep.
"You must be a man, Algy, dear, and go on and make something of your life, as I mean to do. You must be a great soldier. You come of such a grand old family, you ought to remember what all your ancestors have done, and try to be as fine as they were—It's so paltry to drift—You can remember me if you want to—as someone who wasn't weak, even though I am only a common girl, and much beneath you in class. If I was of your class I should now be tempted to marry you, and then I expect with my sort of nature I'd just shove you on into doing something great. But I couldn't as it is, all my time would be taken up with trying to educate myself to keep my own head above water, and trying to suppress my humiliation at the contempt of your friends. You are only a younger son, and they would never forgive you, and we would just lead a hole and corner sort of existence in wretched poverty, and grow to have quarrels and not love at all."
