seemed changed, threatening and unfamiliar; it was exactly as if, in
place of Dodge Pleydon, a secretive impersonal ugliness stood
disclosed before her. He said harshly:

"When will you marry me?"

It was what, above all else, she had wanted; and Linda realized that
to marry him was still the crown of whatever happiness she could
imagine. But her horror of the past recreated by his beating down of
her gossamer-like aspiration, the vision of him flushed and
ruthless, an image of indiscriminate nameless man, made it
impossible for her to reply. An abandon of shrinking fear numbed her
heart and lips.

"You won't get rid of me as you do the others about you," he
continued. "This time you made a mistake. I haven't any pride that
you can insult; but I have all that you--with your character--require.
I have more money even than you can want." She cried despairingly:

"It isn't that now! I had forgotten everything to do with money and
depended on you to take me away from it always."

"When will you marry me?"

In a flash of blinding perception, leaving her as dazed as though it
had been a physical actuality, she realized that marrying him had
become an impossibility. At the barest thought of it the dread again
closed about her like ice. She tried, with all the force of old
valuations, with even an effort to summon back the vanquished
thrill, to give herself to him. But a quality overpowering and