He turned her face up to his and, stooping, kissed her with sudden passion.
"My dear!" he said, "my dear!" Then, after a moment:
"Oh, Nan, Nan, I can hardly believe that you really belong to me!"
Nan could hardly believe it either. It seemed just to have _happened_ somehow, and her conscience smote her. For what had she to give in return for all the love he was offering her? Merely a little liking of a lonely heart that wanted to warm itself at someone's hearth, and beyond that a terrified longing to put something more betwixt herself and Peter Mallory, to double the strength of the barrier which kept them apart. It wasn't giving Trenby a fair deal!
"Roger," she said, at last, "I don't think I'd better belong to you. No, listen!"--as he made a sudden movement--"I must tell you. There _is_ someone else--only we can't ever be more than friends."
Roger stared, at her with the dawning of a new fear in his eyes. When he spoke it was with a savage defiance.
"Then don't tell me! I don't want to hear. You're mine now, anyway."
"I'm not going to listen. You've said you'll marry me. I don't want to hear anything about the other men who were. I'm the man who is. And I'm going to drive you straight back to Mallow and tell everybody about it. Then I'll feel sure of you."
Faced by the irrevocableness of her action, Nan was overtaken by dismay. How recklessly, on the impulse of the moment, she had bartered her freedom away! She felt as though she were caught in the meshes of some net from which there was no escaping. A voice inside her head kept urging: "_Time_! _Time_! _Give me time_!"
"Please, Roger," she began with unwonted humility. "I'd rather you didn't tell people just yet."
"I don't see that there's anything gained by waiting," he said doggedly.
"Time! . . . _Time_!" reiterated the voice inside Nan's head.
"To please me, Roger," she begged. "I want to think things over a bit first."
"It's too late to think things over," he answered jealously. "You've given me your promise. You don't want to take it back again?"
"Perhaps, when you know everything, you'll want me to."
"Tell me 'everything' now, then," he said grimly, "and you'll soon see whether I want you to or not."
Nan was fighting desperately to gain time. She needed it more than anything--time to think, time to weigh the pros and cons of the matter, time to decide. The past was pulling at her heart-strings, filling her with a sudden terror of the promise she had just given Roger.