She half-turned toward him, but did not offer her hand as he took his place by her side.  For a few seconds he said nothing, and when he spoke she accepted his words in the manner in which she had taken his coming.

“So you’re going to marry Conquest!”

It was to show that the abrupt remark had not perturbed her that she nodded her head assentingly, still with the smile that had greeted his arrival.

“Why?”

In spite of her efforts she manifested some surprise.

“What makes you ask that question—­now?”

“Because it never occurred to me before that there might be a special reason.”

“Well, there is one.”

“Has it anything to do with me?”

She backed away from him slightly, to the side curve of the window, where it joined the straight line of the wall.  In this position she had him more directly in view.

“I said there was a reason,” she answered, after some hesitation.  “I didn’t say I would tell you what it was.”

“No, but you will, won’t you?”

“I don’t see why you should want to know.”

“Is that quite true?” he queried, with a somewhat startling fixing of his eyes upon her.  “Don’t you see?  Can’t you imagine?”

“I don’t see why—­in such circumstances as these—­any man should want to know what a woman doesn’t tell him.”

“Then I’ll explain to you.  I want to know, because ...  I think ... you’re marrying Conquest ... when you don’t love him ...”

“He never asked me to love him.  He said he could do without that.”

“... while ... you do love ... some one else.”

She reflected before speaking.  Under his piercing look she took on once more the appealing expression of forest creatures at bay.

“Even if that were true,” she said, at last, “there would be no harm in it as long as there was what you asked me for at first—­a special reason.”

“Is there ever a reason for a step like that?  I don’t believe it.”

“But I do believe it, you see.  That makes a difference.”

“It would make a still greater difference if I begged you not to do it, wouldn’t it?”

She shook her head.  “It wouldn’t—­now.”

“I let you see yesterday that I—­I loved you.”

“Since you force me to acknowledge it—­yes.”

“And you’ve shown me,” he ventured, “within the last minute, that you—­love me.”

Her figure grew more erect against the background of exterior darkness.  Even the hand that rested on the woodwork of the window became tense.  Lambent fire in her eyes—­the light that he used to call non-Aryan—­took the place of the fugitive glance of the woodland animal; but she kept her composure.

“Well, what then?”

“Then you’d be committing a sacrilege against yourself—­if you married any one else but me.”

If her heart bounded at the words, she did nothing to betray it.