“Oh—don't.” He threw up his arm. “I want you. You know that. Marry me—to-morrow.”
“I will not. Do you think I'm going to come into this family and have you cut off? Don't you suppose I know that Clayton Spencer hates the very chair I sit on? He'll come and beg me to marry you, some day. Until then?”
“You won't do it?”
“To-morrow? Certainly not.”
And again he felt desperately his powerlessness to loosen the coils that were closing round him, fetters forged of his own red blood, his own youth, the woman-urge.
She was watching him with her calculating glance.
“You must be in trouble,” she said.
“If I am, it's you and mother who have driven me there.”
He was alarmed then, and lapsed into dogged silence. His anxiety had forced into speech thoughts that had never before been articulate. He was astounded to hear himself uttering them, although with the very speaking he realized now that they were true.
“Sorry, Marion,” he muttered. “I didn't mean all that. I'm excited. That's all.”