"Simply this," he said. "You'll laugh, I daresay; but if you are able to laugh it won't hurt you to promise. I want your word of honour that if you ever change your mind about marrying me, you will come to me like a brave woman and tell me so."
Thus, quite calmly, he made known to her his condition, and in the amazed silence with which she received it he continued to flash hither and thither the wonderful rays that shone from the gems upon her hand. He did not appear to be greatly concerned as to what her answer would be. Simply with an inscrutable countenance he waited for it.
"Is it a bargain?" he asked at last.
She started with an involuntary gesture of shrinking. "Oh, no, Nick!
How could I promise you that? You know I shall never change my mind."
He raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. "That isn't the point under discussion. If it's an impossible contingency, it costs you the less to promise."
He kept her hand in his as he said it, though she fidgeted to be free.
"Please, Nick," she said earnestly, "I would so much rather not."
"You prefer to marry me at once?" he asked, and suddenly it seemed to her that this was the alternative to which he meant to drive her.
She rose in a panic, and he rose also, still keeping her hand. His face looked like a block of yellow granite.
"Must it—must it—be one or the other?" she panted.
He looked at her under flickering eyelids. "I have said it," he remarked.