"Well?" he said sullenly. "Well, Jane?" but he knew what her answer would and must be.
"I can't do what you wish, Hew. I don't think that either of us would be happy now—if we did that." She spoke in a quiet, restrained voice. She was too miserable, too deeply humiliated, for tears.
Together they walked out of the summer house and retraced their steps along the ridge.
"As I cannot do what you wish, would you like me to end our engagement?"
He turned on her fiercely. "I did not think," he cried, "that there lived a woman in the world who could be as cruel as you have been to me to-night!"
"I did not mean to be cruel," she said mournfully.
"Unless you wish to drive me to the devil, don't speak like that again," he said violently. "Promise me, I mean, that you won't think of breaking our engagement."
She made no answer, and a few moments later in a gentler tone he asked, "Can't you understand, Jane?"
She said humbly, "I try to understand."
A great and a healing flood of tenderness filled her heart, and as if the spiritual tie between them was indeed of so close a nature that Lingard felt her softening for the first time put his hand in hers.