yourself airs--dare to pretend to be a monument of innocence--you!"

"You are mad!" the girl said quietly.

"Yes, that's it--mad--mad for you! Mad with love for you!" Slotman
laughed sharply. "I'm a fool--a blind, mad fool; but you've got me as no
other woman ever did. I tell you I know about you and the past, but it
shall make no difference. I repeat my offer now--I'll marry you, in
spite of everything!"

It seemed to Joan that a kind of madness came to her, born of her fear
and her horror of this man.

She forced her way past him, and gained the door, how she scarcely
remembered. She could only recall a great and burning sense of rage and
shame. She remembered seeing, as in some distant vision, a man with
scared eyes and sagging jaw--a man who, an utter coward by nature, had
given way at her approach, whose passion had melted into fear--fear
followed later by senseless rage against himself and against her.

So she had made her retreat from the office of Mr. Philip Slotman, and
had shaken the dust of the place off her feet.

It was all very well to bear up and show a brave and determined face to
the enemy, to give no sign of weakness when the danger threatened. But
now, alone in her own room in the lodging-house, she broke down, as any
sensitive, highly strung woman might.

Joan looked at her face in the glass. She looked at it critically. Was
it the face, she asked herself, of a girl who invited insult? For insult