"Stop!" she held up her hand. "You should know that Mr. Clinton and I are—"
"Grace!" he groaned.
She whispered, her face suddenly growing pale, "Are engaged." The tete-a-tete was beyond her supposed strength. His melodious voice, associated in her mind with divine worship; the burning of those beautiful eyes in which she seemed to see her own love; the attitude of his arms as if, not knowing it, he were reaching out for her—all this was hard for her to resist.
"Engaged!" he echoed, as if she had pronounced one of the world's great tragedies. "Then you will give yourself to that man—yourself, Grace, that beautiful self—and without love? It's a crime! Don't commit the horrible blunder that's ruined my life. See what wretchedness has come to me—"
"Then you think," very slowly, "that I ought to let Fran ruin my whole life because your wife has ruined yours? Then you think that after I have been driven out of the house to make room for Fran, that I ought to stay single because you married unwisely?"
"Grace, don't say you are driven out."
"What do you call it? A resignation?"
"Grace!—we have only a few moments to be alone. For pity's sake, look at me kindly and use another tone—a tone like the dear days when you were by my side….We may never be together again."
She looked at him with the same repellent expression, and spoke in the same bitter tone: "Well, suppose we're not? You and that Fran will be together."
In his realization that it was Fran, and Fran alone, who separated them, Gregory passed into a state of anger, to which his love added recklessness. "Grace, hate me if you must, but you shall not misunderstand me!"