"I felt that--that you were setting me free with one phrase and trying to bind me faster than before with another phrase," she replied.
"But you made no protest. You tacitly admitted that I was entitled to accept your meaning as I did."
"You did not give me a chance. You turned away to speak to some one who came up at that moment."
"What would you have said to me if you had had the chance?" he asked her slowly.
"Oh, do not trouble yourself thinking for an answer," he cried. "What is the good of discussing in this way the--diplomatists call it the _status quo ante?_ Such a discussion is quite profitless. Even if we were not engaged then we are now. The obstacle has been removed."
She felt overcome by the plausibility of it all, just as she had felt overcome in the presence of her father by a sense of the inevitable. It was not surprising that he accepted the long pause on her part as indicating complete surrender to his reasoning. He went towards her with a smile and outstretched hands.
"Do not come to me: I love another man and I mean to marry him--I shall never marry you," she said quietly.
So she had abandoned the untenable position of reason, and had withdrawn to the cover of a statement of complete femininity. She gave a sigh of relief: she knew where she was now. She was on firm ground.
"I am afraid, Josephine," said he with the utmost calmness, "that you have been too late in coming to this determination. You cannot be so flagrantly inconsistent."
"I know nothing about consistency or inconsistency; I love another man, and all the arguments in the world will not prevent my loving him."
She knew where she stood now. Her position was impregnable.
"You say that you broke off your engagement with me. Why? Because I had not got your father's consent. Well, if the absence of your father's consent was a legitimate reason for our engagement coming to an end it is certainly a reason for your refraining from entering into an engagement with another man, for your father cannot give his consent to two men at the same time. You see that you cannot possibly--as you are showing--be engaged to any one but myself."
"I told you I care nothing for consistency--or reason--or logic--or--or--_you_. I love another man--I love another man."