"In a sense, Gervase, but not in reality. In fact, I find that all the past has to be wiped out, and I have to start again."
"Why so?"
"I cannot explain it very well, but I expect we have both changed. Madeline Grover, the school-girl, is not the Madeline Grover of to-day."
"By Jove, I fear that's only too true," he said, almost angrily.
"And the Captain Tregony I met in Washington—excuse me for saying it—is not the Gervase Tregony of Trewinion Hall."
"Have I deteriorated so much?" he questioned, with an angry flash in his eyes.
"I do not say that you have deteriorated at all," she said, with a smile. "Perhaps we have both of us vastly improved. Let us hope so at any rate. But what I am pointing out is, we meet—almost entirely different people."
"That you are different, I don't deny," he answered, sullenly. "In Washington you made heaps of me, now you are as cold as an iceberg. But I deny that I have changed. I loved you then, I have loved you ever since, I love you now."
"Well, have it that I only have changed," she said, with a touch of weariness in her voice. "I don't want to make you angry, Gervase, but you must recognise the fact that I was only a school-girl when we first met. I am a woman now. Hence, you must give me time to adjust myself if you will allow the expression. You see, I have to begin over again."
"That's very cold comfort for me," he said, angrily. "How do I know that some other fellow will not come along? How do I know that some adventurer has not come between us already?"