Montagu Falconer began to walk excitedly about the room.
"There you are!" he said. "There you are! Isn't that a woman all over? Here are you, Jean, with your splendid talents and comparative youth, with a strongly developed sense of what is right and beautiful, prepared to throw yourself away upon a half-pay, knock-kneed, blear-eyed militiaman, who probably wears Jaeger boots and furnishes his rooms with stuffed parrots and linoleum. The idea is unthinkable—impossible! You cannot do it!"
"Then you forbid me to marry him?" said Miss Leslie timidly.
"Certainly I do," replied Montagu, noting to himself with intense gratification that a man has only to be thoroughly firm with a woman to win her complete submission. "You don't care for the creature, I suppose?"
"Not very deeply," confessed Miss Leslie. "He is just a friend—a very old friend."
She sighed, rose from her seat, and held out her hand.
"Good-bye, Montagu," she said, "and thank you! I must be going now. It was good of you to have such a long talk."
"I say, don't go yet," said Montagu. "I mean—" He hesitated. He hardly knew what he did mean.
"I think I really must," replied Miss Leslie.
Montagu accompanied her silently to the door.