"Now it is different!" she echoed in amazement.
"Different in this," pursued he with growing excitement, "that before you were a pure girl—pure as snow—everybody said that—and now you are—are—compromised."
The blood rushed in a torrent up to her hair.
"Who says it?" she demanded, now first showing warmth—"who dares say it?"
"Alas, Jane," he replied, "don't make things worse by deception at parting. Let us be at least as we have always been, honest and unreserved to each other."
"What you have said just now," said the girl' proudly, "is an insult. The time has been when you would not have heard another say such words—either to me or of me; and yet they are as little deserved now as they have ever been."
"They are, are they?" he retorted. "Then pray tell me who was that man you have had here within an hour?"
She turned deadly white, and opened her lips thrice to speak before the words would shape themselves.
"That—man?"
"Do you deny having a man with you?"