"
"Really!" She was so surcharged with rage that she was shaking
with it, was tearing up her handkerchief in her lap.
"Yes, indeed," he assured her, tranquil as a lawyer arguing a
commercial case before a logic-machine of a judge. "If you do not
marry me all your friends will say I jilted you. I needn't tell
you what it would mean in your set, what it would mean as to your
matrimonial prospects, for you to have the reputation of having
been turned down by me--need I?"
She was silent; her head down, her lips compressed, her fingers
fiercely interlaced with the ruins of her handkerchief.
"It is necessary that you marry," said he summing up. "It is
wisest and easiest to marry me, since I am willing. To refuse
would be to inflict an irreparable injury upon yourself in order
to justify a paltry whim for injuring me."
She laughed harshly. "You are frank," said she.
"I am paying you the compliment of frankness. I am appealing to
your intelligence, where a less intelligent man and one that knew
you less would try to gain his point by chicane, flattery,
deception."
"Yes--it is a compliment," she answered. "It was stupid of me to
sneer at your frankness.
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