Her words fell on Leonard like a cold douche. Here had he been talking about his love for her, and yet she ignored the whole thing, and asked him what he wanted to talk about.

‘What a queer girl you are. You don’t seem to attend to what a fellow is saying. Here have I been telling you that I love you, and asking you to marry me; and yet you don’t seem to have even heard me!’ She answered at once, quite sweetly, and with a smile of superiority which maddened him:

‘But that subject is barred!’

‘How do you mean? Barred!’

‘Yes. I told you yesterday!’

‘But, Stephen,’ he cried out quickly, all the alarm in him and all the earnestness of which he was capable uniting to his strengthening,