“Valerie,” he said, “I love you.  Will you marry me?”

She had been leaning sideways on the back of her chair, one hand supporting her cheek, gazing almost listlessly out of the open window.

She did not stir, nor did her face alter, but, very quietly she turned her head and looked at him.

He spoke, breathlessly, eloquently, persuasively, and well; the perfect machinery was imitating for him a single-minded, ardent, honourable young man, intelligent enough to know his own mind, manly enough to speak it.  The facsimile was flawless.

He had finished and was waiting, long fingers gripping the arms of his chair; and her face had altered only to soften divinely, and her eyes were very sweet and untroubled.

“I am glad you have spoken this way to me, Jose.  Something has been said about you—­in connection with Mr. Cardemon—­which disturbed me and made me very sad and miserable, although I would not permit myself to believe it....  And now I know it was a mistake—­because you have asked me to be your wife.”

She sat looking at him, the sadness in her eyes emphasised by the troubled smile curving her lips: 

“I couldn’t marry you, Jose, because I am not in love with you.  If I were I would do it....  But I do not care for you that way.”

For an instant some inner flare of madness blinded his brain and vision.  There was, in his face, something so terrible that Valerie unconsciously rose to her feet, bewildered, almost stunned.

“I want you,” he said slowly.

“Jose!  What in the world—­”

His dry lips moved, but no articulate sound came from them.  Suddenly he sprang to his feet, and out of his twisted, distorted mouth poured a torrent of passion, of reproach, of half-crazed pleading—­incoherency tumbling over incoherency, deafening her, beating in upon her, till she swayed where she stood, holding her arms up as though to shield herself.

The next instant she was straining, twisting in his arms, striving to cry out, to wrench herself free to keep her feet amid the crash of the overturned table and a falling chair.

“Jose!  Are you insane?” she panted, tearing herself free and springing toward the door.  Suddenly she halted, uttered a cry as he jumped back to block her way.  The low window-ledge caught him under both knees; he clutched at nothing, reeled backward and outward and fell into space.

For a second she covered her white face with both hands, then turned, dragged herself to the open window, forced herself to look out.

He lay on his back on the grass in the rear yard, and the janitor was already bending over him.  And when she reached the yard Querida had opened both eyes.

Later the ambulance came, and with its surgeon came a policeman.  Querida, lying with his head on her lap, opened his eyes again: 

“I was—­seated—­on the window-ledge,” he said with difficulty—­“and overbalanced myself....  Caught the table—­but it fell over....  That’s all.”