'It dawned upon me one day, looking in at a shop window where I could see myself, that I was a most disreputable-looking object, quite eligible to be apprehended as an able-bodied vagrant.'
'How delightful! I hope the shock was very bad, because you deserved it. Now that you have come back clothed and in your right mind, I am not going to spare you, Walter, and I will say that after my last visit to Colquhoun Street I quite lost hope. It is always the darkest hour before the dawn, somebody has said.'
'If I'd thought you cared'--Walter began, but stopped suddenly; for Gladys turned from the table, where she was giving her attention to some drooping flowers, and her look was one of the keenest wonder and reproach.
'Now you are weak, Walter, trying to bring your delinquencies home to me,' she said, with the first touch of sharpness he had ever seen in her. 'It has been your own fault entirely all along, and I have never had a solitary bit of sympathy for you, and I don't know, either, what you meant by going on in any such manner.'
'I didn't understand it myself then; I seemed goaded on always to be a perfect brute when you came. But I believe I understand it now, and perhaps it would be better if I did not.'
He spoke with considerable agitation, which Gladys affected not to notice, while her white fingers touched the drooping blossoms tenderly, as if sympathising with them that their little day was over.
'Suppose you enlighten me, then?' she said, gaily still; then suddenly seeing his face, her own became very white.
'I don't dare,' he said hoarsely, 'it is too much presumption; but it will perhaps make you understand and feel for me more than you seem to do. Don't you see, Gladys, that it is my misery to care for you as happier men care for the woman they ask to marry them?'
There was a moment's strained silence, then Gladys spoke in a low, sobbing voice,--
'It is, as I said, Walter, too late, too late! I have promised to marry another man.'
All the eagerness died out of Walter's face, and he turned away immediately as if to leave the room. But Gladys prevented him; her face still red with the hot flush his passionate words had called up, she stood before him, and laid her hand upon his arm.