Still she did not understand him.
"Ronald, what--what do you mean?"
She compelled him to be brutal, or, at least, it seemed to him that she compelled him.
"Lady Griswold, you must forgive my saying that you have made what I had hoped would be the happiest hour of my life one of the bitterest. If you had permitted me to speak at first you would have spared us both much pain. It would be absurd for me to pretend that I do not understand your meaning. You seem to take it for granted that things are to be with us as they were before the war. You appear to be wholly oblivious of the fact that eighteen--or is it nineteen?--years ago you jilted me."
"Jilted you? I--Ronald--I--I jilted you?"
"It is always my desire to use the most courteous and the gentlest language which will adequately convey my meaning. I know not how you may gloze it to yourself. To me it seems simply that--you promised to marry me, and you married Sir Matthew Griswold."
"But--Ronald--I--I have explained--just--how it was."
"Madam, did I require your explanation?"
She shrunk away, cowering as if she were some wild, frightened thing.
"But--but you wrote and asked me to come home."