"Precisely what I say," said he, in the same cool, inevitable way. "A
man came to you with a story about me. You listened. A sufficient answer
to the story was that I am marrying you. That answer apparently does not
content you. Very well. I shall make no other."
She gazed at him uncertainly. She felt him going--and going finally.
She seized him with desperate fingers, cried: "I _am_ content. Oh,
Fred--don't frighten me this way!"
He smiled satirically. "Are you afraid of the scandal--because
everything for the wedding has gone so far?"
"How can you think that!" cried she--perhaps too vigorously, a woman
would have thought.
"What else is there for me to think? You certainly haven't shown any
consideration for me."
"But you told me yourself that you were false to me."
"Really? When?"
She forgot her fear in a gush of rage rising from sudden realization of
what she was doing--of how leniently and weakly and without pride she
was dealing with this man. "Didn't you admit----"
"Pardon me," said he, and his manner might well have calmed the wildest
tempest of anger. "I did not admit. I never admit. I leave that to
people of the sort who explain and excuse and apologize. I simply told
you I was paying the expenses of a family named Hallowell."
"But _why_ should you do it, Fred?"