“But you made no protest. You tacitly admitted that I was entitled to accept your meaning as I did.”
“You did not give me a chance. You turned away to speak to some one who came up at that moment.”
“What would you have said to me if you had had the chance?” he asked her slowly.
She hesitated.
“Oh, do not trouble yourself thinking for an answer,” he cried. “What is the good of discussing in this way the—diplomatists call it the status quo ante? Such a discussion is quite profitless. Even if we were not engaged then we are now. The obstacle has been removed.”
She felt overcome by the plausibility of it all, just as she had felt overcome in the presence of her father by a sense of the inevitable. It was not surprising that he accepted the long pause on her part as indicating complete surrender to his reasoning. He went towards her with a smile and outstretched hands.
“Do not come to me: I love another man and I mean to marry him—I shall never marry you,” she said quietly.