Facing him, waving him away, she had taken another upward step; but he sprang to the side of the stairs and brought his hand, above the banister, down hard on her wrist. "Do you mean to tell me that I must marry a woman I hate?" "It displeased her fearfully," said Owen, looking very queer.!

"Why, letting me tell her a dozen things she can have." "But why on earth?" Mrs. Gereth's sad eyes were fixed on her.

"If you do any such thing, you shall never see me again,—absolutely, literally never!" "I want to take her in the right way, don't you know?—treat her as if I gave her more than just an hour or two." "You've diverged uncommonly far!"—Owen laughed back. Fleda, with her hideous crockery and her father's collections, could conceive that these objects, to her visitor's perception even more strongly than to her own, measured the length of the swing from Poynton and Ricks; she was aware too that her high standards figured vividly enough even to Owen's simplicity to make him reflect that West Kensington was a tremendous fall. If she had fallen it was because she had acted for him. She was all the more content he should thus see she had acted, as the cost of it, in his eyes, was none of her own showing. "What seems to have happened," he exclaimed, "is that you've had a row with her and yet not moved her!"