"But you'd go to save me," he returned.
She gave a little protesting laugh. "No, I shouldn't save you if I went," she said. "You would stay on here then. All I said was that I would not be used as an influence to make you stay. You remember what I told you about my grandfather's plans. Well, sooner than that, I'd do anything. It's purely selfish, I admit that. I don't mind your being ruined, you see, but I won't take any sort of responsibility for it."
"But in that case," he submitted. "I might stop on for a time at all events, if it was quite certain that you weren't the case of my staying.
"No, no; don't begin like that," she broke out passionately. "Once you begin to procrastinate and find excuses there'll be no end to it. That must have been how they all began."
"You're evidently most frightfully anxious to get rid of me," he grumbled. He had seen a ray of hope and resented her instant extinction of it.
"Oh! don't be so babyish!" she said petulantly. "You must know that it hasn't anything to do with getting rid of you."
"I don't see what else it can be," he returned sulkily.
She shrugged her shoulders but attempted no other answer, and they did not speak again until they were back in the deep, overhung lane and within half a mile of Hartling. It was there that he made his last effort.
"Would it be risking too much if I stayed on for just one more week?" he asked. His spurt of temper had evaporated and he was once more humble, conciliating.