“I never stopped loving!” interrupted Joanna passionately, and she pressed the palm of one hand against her throat. “You know it well enough. And I don’t want to get married. At least not yet and not to Lawrence.”

“If that’s so, then you must be mad, that’s all,” returned Louis; “and I think you are, too”. But a change had come over his face, and for a second his fingers went slyly to his bright moustache, an action that always made Joanna’s blood mount like wine.

She held her hands tightly together in her lap.

“Don’t you see,” she pleaded, “it’s because you don’t love me enough I can’t be – I don’t – what can I say? – I musn’t let you go on making love to me when you really care so little. For you as well as myself; I can’t, can I? Don’t you feel in your heart that I’m right not to? Tell me honestly what you think I should do, and I’ll do it.”

Louis looked at her for some moments in silence.

“It seems to me,” he said at length, “that there’s no more to be said. You know best what it is you want: and if you don’t think I love you enough you are the one to judge. I can’t offer to marry you. Frankly, if I could, I believe I would – if that’s any good to you. But it isn’t, I know. Nothing I can say or do is any good to you. Don’t you think I’ve gone over that a hundred times in my mind? And just because I feel as I do towards you I’m the last person to advise you. I see you sitting there looking like I don’t know what – I never quite know what you make me think of – and I feel I’d rather you were dead than in another man’s arms. There you are! And what use is that to you? I believe you really want to get married. Besides, in any case you have decided that I don’t love you enough.”

“So, Signora Rasponi,” he continued with one of his flourishes, when he had waited in vain for some retort from Joanna, “it only remains to wish you every happiness in the lot to which it has pleased heaven to call you.”

“Really, my dear,” he finished, becoming suddenly tired and simple, “perhaps you are quite right. I honestly hope so. Anyhow I wish you all the luck. I can’t say more, can I? I only want you to do the best for yourself. And now good bye.” He picked up his hat and stick and held out his hand.

Joanna did not move. She had ached to rend open this man’s heart, to wrest from him the secret truth of his being. And she had failed. He had kept himself almost wholly inviolate. But in the attempt she had discovered anew that she needed him. He must stay. She could not let him go. All her energy now centred on this, that he must not go. Perhaps for the first time since childhood she was in deadly earnest. The insistent, warping histrionics of girlhood were gone. She was a simple, desperate woman trying to hold a man for her need.