She raised her head and met his eyes fairly.
"No. I refuse you."
He could not understand.
"You—"
"I refuse to marry you. Is that clear?" she cried.
What had come over her? The warm color had flooded back to her heart and her eyes were cold like dead embers.
"I won't believe you," he said doggedly.
"You must. It was a mistake—all this—a mistake from the first. I was made to have followed you. You should have denied me—then—back there—"
"I loved you then—I know it now—and you—"
"No—not love, John Markham," she went on. "If you had loved me you would have sent me back to Paris—and saved me from—from myself. You loved me then, you say," she laughed scornfully. "What kind of love is this that slinks in hiding, preaches of friendship for its own ends and rants of philosophy? What kind of love that scoffs at public opinion and finds itself at last a topic of amusement at a fashionable dining table? A selfish love, a nameless love from which all tenderness, all gentleness and beauty—"