"What was that?"
"To keep my promise with you. He asked me to marry you! Why?"
Infinite wit of woman! What chance have we men against such weapons? It was coquetry she forced to her face, and nothing else, when she answered: "So, then, he was hard hit, after all! I did not know that. How tender of him, to wish me married to another than himself! The conceit of you men is something wondrous."
"Mr. Orme was so kind as to inform me that I was a gentleman, and likewise a very great ass."
"Did you promise him to keep your promise, Jack?" She put both her hands on mine as it lay on the chair arm. Her eyes looked into mine straight and full. It would have taken more imagination than mine to suspect the slightest flickering in their lids. "Jack," she murmured over and over again. "I love you! I have never loved any other man."
"So now," I resumed, "I have come to you to tell you of all these things, and to decide definitely and finally in regard to our next plans."
"But you believe me, Jack? You do promise to keep your promise? You do love me?"
"I doubt no woman whom I wed," I answered. "I shall be gone for two or three weeks. As matters are at this moment it would be folly for either of us to do more than let everything stand precisely as it is until we have had time to think. I shall come back, Miss Grace, and I shall ask your answer."
"Jack, I'm sure of that," she murmured. "It is a grand thing for a woman to have the promise of a man who knows what a promise is."
I winced at this, as I had winced a thousand times at similar thrusts unconsciously delivered by so many. "No," said I, "I think Orme is right. I am only a very stupid ass."