He suppressed a short word of impatience.  “And suppose you don’t hear?” he asked.

She made a blind movement with her hands.  “Then—–­I give in.”

“You will marry me?” he insisted.

“If you like,” she answered drearily.  “I expect you will very soon get tired of me.”

“There’s a remedy for everything,” he answered jauntily.  “But we needn’t consider that.  I’m just mad to get you, you poor little icicle.  I’ll warm you up, never fear.  When you’ve been married to me a week, you won’t know yourself.”  She shivered and was silent.

He turned in his tracks, perceiving he was making no headway.  “Then we’re engaged provisionally anyway,” he insisted.  “There’s no need to contradict the general impression—­unless we’re obliged.  We’ll behave like lovers—­till further notice.”

She got to her feet.  Her knees were trembling.  The net was close at last.  She seemed to feel it pressing on her throat.  “You are not—­to kiss me,” she managed to say.

He frowned at the condition, but he conceded it.  The game was so nearly his that he could afford to be generous.  Besides, he would exact payment in full later for any little concessions she wrung from him now.

“I’m bein’ awfully patient,” he said pathetically.  “I hope you’ll take that into account.  You really might just as well give in first as last.”

But Sylvia had given in, and she knew it.  Nothing but a miracle could save her now.  The only loophole she had for herself was one which she realized already was highly unlikely to serve her.  She had been practically forced into submission, and she did not attempt to disguise the fact from herself.

Yet if only Guy had not failed her, she knew that no power on earth would have sufficed to move her, no clamour of battle could ever have made her quail.  That had been the chink in her armour, and through that she had been pierced again and again, till she was vanquished at last.

She felt too weary now, too utterly overwhelmed by circumstances, to care what happened.  Yes, she would cable to Guy as she had said.  But her confidence was gone.  She was convinced already that no word would come back in answer out of the void that had swallowed him,

She went through the evening as one in a dream.  People offered her laughing congratulations, and she never knew how she received them.  She seemed to be groping her way through an all-enveloping mist of despair.

One episode only stood out clearly from all the rest, and that was when all were assembled at supper and out of the gay hubbub she caught the sound of her own name.  Then for a few intolerable moments she became vividly alive to that which was passing around her.  She knew that George Preston’s arm encircled her, and that everyone present had risen to drink to their happiness.

As soon as it was over she crept away like a wounded thing and hid herself.  Only a miracle could save her now.