It was meant to fall on the flagged floor and break; it would create a diversion, and picking up the pieces would give her time to get used to the suffocating heart-beats. She had enough of the Polkington self-mastery left to think of the manœuvre and its advisability, but not enough to carry it out properly; the cup fell on the doubled-up tea-cloth that lay at her feet and was not broken at all. Nevertheless the incident and her own contempt for her failure steadied her a little.
Rawson-Clew picked up the cup. "Do you not understand," he said. "It is quite simple; I have put it to you before, too—not in the same words, but it comes to the same—the plain terms used then were—will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?"
Julia's heart seemed to stop for a second, then it went on heavily as before, but she only asked, "Did you not get my letter, the one I wrote in Holland about that?"
"The one when you told me of your arrangements? By the way you did not mention that you were going to Van de Greutz's for the explosive, yes, I got that, but it was scarcely an answer."
"I explained that it meant 'no.'"
"In a postscript; you cannot answer a proposal of marriage in a postscript."
There really does not seem sufficient ground to justify this statement, still she did not combat it. "Can't I?" she said. "Then I will answer it now—no. It was good of you to offer, generous and honourable, but, of course, I should not accept. I mean, I could not even if there had been any need, and, as you see, there was not a particle of need then, still less now."
"No need, no," he answered, and there was a new note in his voice; "it is not a case of necessity or anything of the sort. Put all that nonsense of justice and honour and gratitude out of the question, you know that it does not come in. I own it did weigh somewhat then, but now—now I want the good comrade; I don't deserve her, or a tithe of what she has done for me, but I can't do without her—herself, the corporal fact—don't you know that?"
"No," Julia said; somehow it was all she could say.
"You don't know it? Then I'll tell you." But he did not for she prevented him.