Viewed in the light
of what was to follow, it would seem to him that she was trying to
foreclose his affection. That could not be allowed to pass; the error
must be rectified. And yet! . . . And yet this very error must be
cleared up before she could make her full wish apparent. She seemed to
find herself compelled by inexorable circumstances into an unlooked-for
bluntness. In any case she must face the situation. Her pluck did not
fail her; it was with a very noble and graceful simplicity that she
turned to her companion and said:

'Leonard, I did not quite mean that. It would be a pleasure to me to be
of that or any other service to you, if I might be so happy! But I never
meant to allude to your debts. Oh! Leonard, can't you understand! If
you were my husband--or--or going to be, all such little troubles would
fall away from you. But I would not for the world have you think . . . ' Her very voice failed her. She could not speak what was in her mind; she
turned away, hiding in her hands her face which fairly seemed to burn. This, she thought, was the time for a true lover's opportunity! Oh, if
she had been a man, and a woman had so appealed, how he would have sprung
to her side and taken her in his arms, and in a wild rapture of declared
affection have swept away all the pain of her shame! But she remained alone. There was no springing to her side; no rapture
of declared affection; no obliteration of her shame. She had to bear it
all alone. There, in the open; under the eyes that she would fain have
seen any other phase of her distress. Her heart beat loud and fast; she
waited to gain her self-control. Leonard Everard had his faults, plenty of them, and he was in truth
composed of an amalgam of far baser metals than Stephen thought; but he
had been born of gentle blood and reared amongst gentlefolk. He did not
quite understand the cause or the amount of his companion's concern; but
he could not but recognise her distress. He realised that it had
followed hard upon her most generous intention towards himself. He could
not, therefore, do less than try to comfort her, and he began his task in
a conventional way, but with a blundering awkwardness which was all
manlike. He took her hand and held it in his; this much at any rate he
had learned in sitting on stairs or in conservatories after extra dances. He said as tenderly as he could, but with an impatient gesture unseen by
her:

'Forgive me, Stephen! I suppose I have said or done something which I
shouldn't. But I don't know what it is; upon my honour I don't. Anyhow,
I am truly sorry for it. Cheer up, old girl! I'm not your husband, you
know; so you needn't be distressed.' Stephen took her courage _a deux mains_. If Leonard would not speak she
must. It was manifestly impossible that the matter could be left in its
present state. 'Leonard,' she said softly and solemnly, 'might not that some day be?' Leonard, in addition to being an egotist and the very incarnation of
selfishness, was a prig of the first water. He had been reared
altogether in convention. Home life and Eton and Christchurch had taught
him many things, wise as well as foolish; but had tended to fix his
conviction that affairs of the heart should proceed on adamantine lines
of conventional decorum. It never even occurred to him that a lady could
so far step from the confines of convention as to take the initiative in
a matter of affection. In his blind ignorance he blundered brutally. He
struck better than he knew, as, meaning only to pass safely by an awkward
conversational corner, he replied:

'No jolly fear of that! You're too much of a boss for me!' The words
and the levity with which they were spoken struck the girl as with a
whip. She turned for an instant as pale as ashes; then the red blood
rushed from her heart, and face and neck were dyed crimson. It was not a
blush, it was a suffusion. In his ignorance Leonard thought it was the
former, and went on with what he considered his teasing. 'Oh yes! You know you always want to engineer a chap your own way and
make him do just as you wish. The man who has the happiness of marrying
you, Stephen, will have a hard row to hoe!' His 'chaff' with its utter
want of refinement seemed to her, in her high-strung earnest condition,
nothing short of brutal, and for a few seconds produced a feeling of
repellence. But it is in the nature of things that opposition of any
kind arouses the fighting instinct of a naturally dominant nature. She
lost sight of her femininity in the pursuit of her purpose; and as this
was to win the man to her way of thinking, she took the logical course of
answering his argument. If Leonard Everard had purposely set himself to
stimulate her efforts in this direction he could hardly have chosen a
better way. It came somewhat as a surprise to Stephen, when she heard
her own words:

'I would make a good wife, Leonard! A husband whom I loved and honoured
would, I think, not be unhappy!' The sound of her own voice speaking
these words, though the tone was low and tender and more self-suppressing
by far than was her wont, seemed to peal like thunder in her own ears. Her last bolt seemed to have sped. The blood rushed to her head, and she
had to hold on to the arms of the rustic chair or she would have fallen
forward. The time seemed long before Leonard spoke again; every second seemed an
age. She seemed to have grown tired of waiting for the sound of his
voice; it was with a kind of surprise that she heard him say:

'You limit yourself wisely, Stephen!' 'How do you mean?' she asked, making a great effort to speak. 'You would promise to love and honour; but there isn't anything about
obeying.' As he spoke Leonard stretched himself again luxuriously, and laughed with
the intellectual arrogance of a man who is satisfied with a joke, however
inferior, of his own manufacture. Stephen looked at him with a long look
which began in anger--that anger which comes from an unwonted sense of
impotence, and ends in tolerance, the intermediate step being admiration. It is the primeval curse that a woman's choice is to her husband; and it
is an important part of the teaching of a British gentlewoman, knit in
the very fibres of her being by the remorseless etiquette of a thousand
years, that she be true to him. The man who has in his person the
necessary powers or graces to evoke admiration in his wife, even for a
passing moment, has a stronghold unconquerable as a rule by all the
deadliest arts of mankind. Leonard Everard was certainly good to look upon as he lolled at his ease
on that summer morning. Tall, straight, supple; a typical British
gentleman of the educated class, with all parts of the body properly
developed and held in some kind of suitable poise. As Stephen looked, the anxiety and chagrin which tormented her seemed to
pass.