"Don't you love me?" said he.
"If I did, I 've promised not to!" she replied firmly.
"What 's the use of that, if you do?" Jack did n't know it, but he had put a question which undermined all first principles.
"I keep my word!" she replied, with great dignity. It was no answer to his question, but it saved her for the moment. The implied reproach turned his position and forced him to be on the defensive.
"So do I!" he said, quite boldly and unabashed: so unabashed that she could only stare at him in amazement and cry "Oh!"
"Differently," he explained. "I told my father; and I promised I 'd stay away a week, to make sure. I 've made sure, and I 've come. Is n't that keeping my word?"
Marjolaine was shaken, and he had stated his case so cunningly that she could not, on the spur of the moment, put her finger on the weak point—the truth being, that she did not want to. "It seems so, when you tell it, but—"
"Do they want you to marry somebody else?" said he.
"No."
"Well, they want me to!" and he added with modest but conscious virtue, "but I refused."