"I'll marry you, Kitty."
She laughed in her tired fashion. "You want to make an honest woman of me, do you?"
"No. I think I'm endeavouring to make myself an honest man. If you give Lucy up for me I don't want you to lose by the transaction. You were to have been married; but for me perhaps, you would have been. Very well, I'll marry you."
"And that," said she, "will make it all right?"
"Well, won't it?"
"No, it won't. How could it?"
"You know how. It will help you to keep straight. That's what you want, isn't it?"
"Oh yes, that's what I want. And you think I'll keep straight by marrying you?"
"I won't swear to it. But I know it's ten to one that you'll go to the devil if you don't marry me. And you say you don't want to do that."
"I don't want—to marry you."