But she sat down and pulled the cloak up round her face.
"Now," he said, "as I understand the case--it's this. You live rather a dull life with two tyrannical aunts--and the passion for romance...."
"They're not tyrannical--only one's always ill and the other's always nursing her. She makes her get up and read to her in the night. That's her light you saw--"
"Well, I pass the aunts. Anyhow, you met Harry--somehow--"
"It was at the Choral Society. And then they stopped my going--because he walked home with me one wet night."
"And you have never seen each other since?"
"And communicated by some means more romantic than the post?"
"It wasn't romantic. It was tennis-balls."
"You cut a slit and squeeze it and put a note in, and it shuts up and no one notices it. It wasn't romantic at all. And I don't know why I should tell you anything about it."
"And then, I suppose, there were glances in church, and stolen meetings in the passionate hush of the rose-scented garden."
"There's nothing in the garden but geraniums," she said, "and we always talked over the wall--he used to stand on their chicken house, and I used to turn our dog kennel up on end and stand on that. You have no right to know anything about it, but it was not in the least romantic."
"No--that sees itself! May I ask whether it was you or he who proposed this elopement?"
"Oh, how _dare_ you!" she said, jumping up; "you have no right to insult me like this."
He caught her wrist. "Sit down, you little firebrand," he said. "I gather that he proposed it. You, at any rate, consented, no doubt after the regulation amount of proper scruples. It's all very charming and idyllic and--what are you crying for? Your lost hopes of a happy life with a boy you know nothing of, a boy you've hardly seen, a boy you've never talked to about anything but love's young dream?"
"I'm _not_ crying," she said passionately, turning her streaming eyes on him, "you know I'm not--or if I am, it's only with rage. You may be a doctor--though I don't believe you are--but you're not a gentleman. Not anything like one!"
"I suppose not," he said; "a gentleman would not make conditions. I'm going to make one. You can't go to Harry, because his Mother would be seriously annoyed if you did; and so, believe me, would he--though you don't think it. You can get up and leave me, and go 'away into the night,' like a heroine of fiction--but you can't keep on going away into the night for ever and ever. You must have food and clothes and lodging. And the sun rises every day. You must just quietly and dully go home again. And you can't do it without me. And I'll help you if you'll promise not to see Harry, or write to him for a year."