She turned her back to him. She moved across the room; she stood trifling with the fringe of the curtains.
"This is the maddest thing of which ever yet I heard."
He could hear that her voice was trembling.
"You know, Dora, I'm not asking you to say at once that you will be my wife. I daren't, and that's the fact; but I'm asking you one day to try to say you will. I want something to keep me going. I want something to save me from that woman Murphy."
"I believe 'that woman Murphy,' as you politely term the lady, is at the bottom of the compliment--I suppose I must call it so--which you have paid to me."
There was a curious intonation in the voice from the curtains.
"She has been making love to me. I couldn't stand that when I loved you, Dora!" The gentleman was creeping round the table. "Say that you will try!"
"Suppose I do?"
"Dora!"
She would not let him stay. They parted, this queer pair! He dined, not at his hotel, but at a restaurant on the Front; dined well! When he left it was with that good digestion which waits on appetite. He walked as if he walked on air. He certainly had the gift of making history quickly.