Marise saw the two pictures--the dream and the reality; and the difference made her sick. All the sense of wild adventure was gone. There was _no_ adventure! There was just blank ruin.
What a fool she had been! Was there no way out, even now? Surely there was one. She could still say "No," instead of "Yes," and there'd be an end, where Garth was concerned.
Perhaps on the spur of the moment Marise would have followed her impulse, if--Lord Pobblebrook hadn't been present. Somehow, before him she couldn't make a scene!
The girl felt as if two unseen influences had her by the arm, one on the right, one on the left, like the white and black angels of the Mohammedan. They pulled both ways at once, and trembling as she never had trembled on a first night at the theatre, she looked up at Garth.
There was an odd expression in his yellow-grey eyes, which she had likened to the eyes of a lion in a Zoo who sees nothing save his far-off desert. This lion was not now thinking of the desert. He was thinking of her. But how? As a piece of meat which he would soon be free to devour? Or--as a new keeper who, though young and a woman, would have to be reckoned with?
As this question flashed through her mind, Marise remembered that she knew nothing of Garth's past, nor of his character, except that he had fought and won the V.C., therefore he must be brave. But why worry, since in a few months they'd part, and she would forget him, as she'd forgotten several leading men who played "opposite" her when she first went on the stage?
But that look in the yellow-grey eyes; what was its language? What was in the soul or brain behind the eyes? Was Garth deciding how to treat her during the short time that would be his?
Marise recalled the sound of his voice when he had asked her what would come after the marriage. She'd answered that she "hadn't thought yet." And he had said, "_You had better think. Think now._"
"Well, I'm not alone in the world, and I'm not afraid of him," she encouraged herself. "Cave Man business is old stuff. And anyhow--what price a Cave _Girl_?"
The vision of a Cave Girl downing a surprised Cave Man almost made Marise laugh; and then it was time for the ring. Good gracious, the _ring_! Of course, no one had thought of it!