He shook his head. "No, I didn't mention it to her." Then he went on very deliberately, looking her straight in the face, "Mrs. Walbridge, I do not wish to marry your daughter."
As soon as she had grasped that she really had heard the words, she sprang to her feet, years younger in her anger.
"What do you mean?" she cried.
He smiled sadly. "Don't be angry, I have the greatest possible esteem and admiration for Grisel."
"But you do not wish to marry her?"
"No! I do not."
In those few short days of long ago he had never seen Violet Blaine angry, and since he had found her again she had seemed so timid, so flattened by life, that he had been unable to conceive of her in any mood but that of her daily one of gentle unobtrusive hopelessness; and now, as she blazed at him, standing there with clenched hands and shortened breath, he suddenly felt twenty years younger, as if all sorts of recent things had been only a dream, and that this—this only, was real.
He looked at her with such plain-to-be-seen satisfaction and admiration, that she was startled and drew back, losing her bearings, and then he spoke.
"You and I," he said, "are too old to do anything but speak plainly to each other; affectations and pretty little pretences are part of the pageant of youth; we have no right to them. So I will be quite short in telling you what I have to say. Grisel is a delightful girl as well as a most beautiful one, but I made a mistake in asking her to marry me. I do not wish to marry her; I do not love her."
Again her righteous anger blazed up to his curious gratification and delight, but he went on doggedly.