Kate looked up again, fearlessly now.

“I mean just what I say.”

“You have told me nothing—yet,” the man repeated. “Then you have something—to tell me?”

Kate nodded and pushed Peter’s head aside almost roughly.

“The man I can care for, the man I marry must have no thought of hurt for Charlie Bryant in his mind.”

“Then you——”

Kate made a movement of impatience.

“Again, I mean just what I say—no more, no less.”

But it was Fyles’s turn to become impatient.

“Bryant—Charlie Bryant? It is always Charlie Bryant—before all things!”