"You're not going to marry him."
She smiled at him pityingly, but her colour was fuller. He wondered why she should remain at all when it would be so easy to slip through the doorway to the protection of Blodgett and the others. Of course to hurt him again.
"I don't believe you love him. I'm sure you don't. You shan't throw yourself away."
Her foot tapped the rug. He watched her try to make her smile amused. Her failure, he told himself, offered proof that he was right.
"One can no longer even be angry with you," she said. "Who gave you a voice in my destiny?"
"You," he answered, quickly, "and I don't surrender my rights. If I can help it you're not going to throw away your youth. Why did you tell me first of all you were going to be married?"
She braced herself against the table, staring at him. In her eyes he caught a fleeting expression of fright. He believed she was held at last by a curiosity more absorbing than her temper.
"What do you mean?"
Old Planter's bass tones throbbed to them.
"Nothing can keep us out of the war now."