'Yes I have,' replies Philippa clasping her hands tightly behind her
back.

'Do you mean it?' he asks in a bewildered tone.

'Yes,' this very low.

'May I ask why you have changed?' and Dalrymple draws himself up and his
voice is cold and studiously polite. 'Is it money,--I am not very well
off I know, but I did not think you were the kind of girl to mind that?'

'Ah, you see I am different from what you thought, it is a good thing we
found it out before it was too late.'

Jimmy looks at her curiously, and then catches her in his arms. 'Oh my
dearest,' he says, 'you can't mean it, you could not be so cruel--'

For a second Lippa feels she cannot hold out any longer, but it is only
for a second, and then freeing herself from his embrace she says slowly
and distinctly--'I mean all I have said.'

'I must go then,' says Jimmy, a world of sorrow in his honest brown
eyes.

'Yes,' she replies, not daring to look up till she hears the door shut
behind him, and then she realises all she has done: sent away the man
she loves, the one man who is 'her world of all the men'; sent him away
thinking she is cruel and mercenary. She chokes back the tears that
start to her eyes; the others must not know, must not even suspect, but
oh the aching at her heart.