She turned her head slowly and looked at him.
His eyes were very eager and anxious, but for the first time in her life Marie's heart was not at his feet, and she was not conscious of any desperate longing to drive away his anxiety and agree to what he wanted.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked sharply.
He was beginning to realize that it was not only her voice that had changed and the expression of her eyes when she looked at him, but the girl herself; that she could no longer be coaxed and bullied by 221 him—that she was a woman with a will of her own in her soft frame.
"I was thinking." she said slowly, "that I will agree to try what you suggest, on one condition . . ."
His face brightened.
"Anything, of course! Anything you like." He was sure that she could not be going to impose anything very hard.
It came, therefore, as something of a shock when she said: "I will do as you suggest, if—at the end of a month, we find we can't get on any better, and—and be happy . . . you will let me go."
He echoed her words blankly.
"Let you go! What do you mean?"