"Do you mean"—she drew her hands away—"that you like some other girl better?"
He laughed rudely.
"No," he said, "not that."
"But you don't care for me?" She recovered all her dignity. "If you don't care for me, why aren't you brave enough to say so?"
The afternoon sun fell through the hall-window and showed her to him very fair.
"Betty," he said slowly, "there are only two kinds of marriages you understand: there is the Church, but I don't believe any more in any church; and there's the Law, but the Law can't make a marriage for me."
At least the immediate purport of the words she understood. Her face burned red and then became white and still.
"You mean——" she began. Her hands clenched. "Oh!" she cried.
She tried to pass him.
Passion left him, but a great sorrow took its place as his master. He wanted to justify himself; he even so wanted to repair the hurt done her that he would have shut his eyes to the new light. He seized her hand.