“The trouble with us,” mused Malcourt, lazily switching the fragrant beach-grapes with his riding-crop, “is inbreeding.  Yes, that’s it.  And we know what it brings to kings and kine alike.  Tressilvain is half-mad, I think.  And we are used up and out of date....  The lusty, jewelled bacchantes who now haunt the inner temple kindle the social flames with newer names than ours.  Few of us count; the lumbering British or Dutch cattle our race was bred from, even in these brief generations, have become decadent and barren; we are even passing from a fashion which we have neither intellect to sustain nor courage to dictate to.  It’s the raw West that is to be our Nemesis, I think....  ’Mix corpuscles or you die!’—­that’s what I read as I run—­I mean, saunter; the Malcourts never run, except to seed.  My, what phosphorescent perversion!  One might almost mistake it for philosophy....  But it’s only the brilliancy of decay, Virginia; and it’s about time that the last Malcourt stepped down and out of the scheme of things.  My sister is older, but I don’t mind going first—­even if it is bad manners.”

“Is that why you have never asked me to marry you?” she said, white as a ghost.

Startled to silence he walked on beside her.  She had pressed her pallid face against his shoulder again; one thin hand crushed her gloves and riding-crop into her hip, the other, doubled, left in the palm pale imprints of her fingers.

“Is that the reason?” she repeated.

“No, dear.”

“Is it because you do not care for me—­enough?”

“Partly.  But that is easily remedied.”

“Or”—­with bent head—­“because you think too—­lightly—­of me—­”

“No!  That’s a lie anyway.”

“A—­a lie?”

“Yes.  You lie to yourself if you think that!  You are not that sort.  You are not, and you never were and never could be.  Don’t you suppose I know?”—­almost with a sneer:  “I won’t have it—­nor would you!  It is you, not I, who have controlled this situation; and if you don’t realise it I do.  I never doubted you even when you prattled to me of moderation. I know that you were not named with your name in mockery, or in vain.”

Dumb, thrilled, understanding in a blind way what this man had said, dismayed to find safety amid the elements of destruction, a sudden belief in herself—­in him, too, began to flicker.  “Had the still small flame been relighted for her?  Had it never entirely died?”

“If—­you will have me, Louis,” she whispered.

“I don’t love you.  I’m rather nearer than I ever have been just now.  But I am not in love.”

“Could you ever—­”

“Yes.”

“Then—­why—­”

“I’ll tell you why, some day.  Not now.”

They had come to where their horses were tied.  He put her up, adjusted boot-strap and skirt, then swung gracefully aboard his own pie-faced Tallahassee nag, wheeling into the path beside her.