'She meant our engagement,' said Mr. Van Torp in a matter-of-fact
tone. 'We had broken it off that afternoon. She meant that it was I
who did it, and so it was. Perhaps she did not like to think that when
she was dead people might call her heartless and say she had thrown me
over; and no one would ever know the truth except me, unless I chose
to tell--me and her father.'

'Then you were not to be married after all!' Margaret showed her
surprise.

'No. I had broken it off. We were going to let it be known the next
day.'

'On the very eve of the wedding!'

'Yes.' Mr. Van Torp fixed his eyes on Margaret's again. 'On the very
eve of the wedding,' he said, repeating her words.

He spoke very slowly and without emphasis, but with the greatest
possible distinctness. Margaret had once been taken to see a motor-car
manufactory and she remembered a machine that clipped bits off the
end of an iron bar, inch by inch, smoothly and deliberately. Mr. Van
Torp's lips made her think of that; they seemed to cut the hard words
one by one, in lengths.

'Poor girl!' she sighed, and looked away.

The man's face did not change, and if his next words echoed the
sympathy she expressed his tone did not.