"Well, what of that? You don't suppose I think any of them have got anything on you, do you? Besides, dad isn't altogether an old idiot, and if the kind of society woman he wants me to marry wouldn't look at me, and if my happiness is at stake . . . Well, even if he did want to ruin my life by hitching me up in double harness to a clothes-horse, I wouldn't let him!"
"There isn't anything you want that I can't get you. If you like this sort of thing, you shall have it. And don't run away with the idea that I'm not strong for society myself--the right sort."
Her gesture was hopeless. "What can I say to you?"
He suggested quietly, not without humour: "If you don't mind, say yes."
"You don't know what you're doing, making me such an offer. Suppose I married you for your money . . ."
"You've got to love me first. And you're too fine and honest to pretend that for the sake of my money."
Of a sudden his tone changed. "Oh, forgive me!" he pleaded. "I was a fool to ask. I might have known--I did know you didn't care for me. Only, I hoped, and I guess a man in love can't help letting his hopes make him foolish, especially when he sees the girl in trouble of some sort, needing what he can give her, love and protection--and when it's moonlight and there's music in the air!"
He checked himself with a lifted hand and stood for a moment, half smiling, as if made suddenly conscious of the pulsing rapture of those remote violins.
"_That's_ what's made all the mischief," he complained: "that, and the way you look. It isn't a fair combination to work on a fellow, you know. Please don't say anything; you've said enough. I know very well what you mean, but I'd rather not hear it in one word of two letters--not to-night. I'm just foolish enough to prefer to go on hoping for a while, believing there was a bare chance I had misunderstood you."
He laughed half-heartedly, said "Good night" with an admirable air of accepting his dismissal as a matter of course, and marched off as abruptly as if reminded of an overdue appointment.
No other manoeuvre could have been more shrewdly calculated to advance his cause; nothing makes so compelling an appeal to feminine sympathies as a rejected suitor taking his punishment like a man; the emotional affinity of pity has been established ever since the invention of love.