"I—I didn't say so, if you remember, Joan. The word entirely originated with—"
"Oh, I know," she interrupted impatiently; "but why don't you think so? You ought to—everybody does—Norah would."
"Norah isn't—Norah can't understand—that is, Norah does not know you so well as I do, and she is a little prejudiced sometimes—" stumbled the musician.
"Just so, yes," said Lady Joan, gravely, and there was a pause.
"Then you agree with me that I have done the best thing under the circumstances, the miserable circumstances?" she began again in a few moments.
"I always agree with you," said the musician; "but you must own that—not knowing the circumstances which—which led to your course of action, it—it becomes difficult—"
He yielded to a nervous desire to laugh instead of finishing his sentence; and Lady Joan, after a desperate effort to lose her temper, weakly followed his example.
"Tell me why you did it," he said more naturally when they were grave again, and he walked round the table and leaned over the back of her chair. She fell into the rôle of the penitent child.
"I couldn't help it, it came over me yesterday that I couldn't stand it any longer. I've always said perpetual engagements would not answer, because people could never stand the awful monotony of them. It is only the monotony of Jack's love for me that has exhausted my patience now. If he had really been at all wild after we were engaged, which every one was so fond of prophesying to me, I think I might have got to love him too much to give him up. But—oh! it is the badness in me I think, Digby. Why don't you scold me instead of looking at me like that?"
He stroked her hair idly without speaking, and she had to laugh again to hide the tremor in her lips.