“Roger,” she said, at last, “I don’t think I’d better belong to you.  No, listen!”—­as he made a sudden movement—­“I must tell you.  There is someone else—­only we can’t ever be more than friends.”

Roger stared, at her with the dawning of a new fear in his eyes.  When he spoke it was with a savage defiance.

“Then don’t tell me!  I don’t want to hear.  You’re mine now, anyway.”

“I think I ought—­” she began weakly.

But he brushed her scruples aside.

“I’m not going to listen.  You’ve said you’ll marry me.  I don’t want to hear anything about the other men who were.  I’m the man who is.  And I’m going to drive you straight back to Mallow and tell everybody about it.  Then I’ll feel sure of you.”

Faced by the irrevocableness of her action, Nan was overtaken by dismay.  How recklessly, on the impulse of the moment, she had bartered her freedom away!  She felt as though she were caught in the meshes of some net from which there was no escaping.  A voice inside her head kept urging:  “Time! Time! Give me time!”

“Please, Roger,” she began with unwonted humility.  “I’d rather you didn’t tell people just yet.”

But Trenby objected.

“I don’t see that there’s anything gained by waiting,” he said doggedly.

“Time! . . . Time!” reiterated the voice inside Nan’s head.

“To please me, Roger,” she begged.  “I want to think things over a bit first.”

“It’s too late to think things over,” he answered jealously.  “You’ve given me your promise.  You don’t want to take it back again?”

“Perhaps, when you know everything, you’ll want me to.”

“Tell me ‘everything’ now, then,” he said grimly, “and you’ll soon see whether I want you to or not.”

Nan was fighting desperately to gain time.  She needed it more than anything—­time to think, time to weigh the pros and cons of the matter, time to decide.  The past was pulling at her heart-strings, filling her with a sudden terror of the promise she had just given Roger.

“I can’t tell you anything now,” she said rather breathlessly.  “I did try—­a little while ago, and you wouldn’t listen.  You—­you must give me a few days—­you must!  If you don’t, I’ll say ‘no’ now—­at once!” her voice rising excitedly.

She was overwrought, strung up to such a pitch that she hardly knew what she was saying.  She had been through a good deal in the last hour or two and Trenby realised it.  Suddenly that grim determination of his to force her promise, to bind her his here and now, yielded to an overwhelming flood of tenderness.

“It shall be as you wish, Nan,” he said very gently.  “I know I’m asking everything of you, and that you’re frightened and upset to-day.  I ought not to have spoken.  And—­and I’m a lot older than you.”

“Oh, it isn’t that,” replied Nan hastily, fearing he might be feeling sore over the disparity in their respective ages.  She did not want him to be hurt about things that would never have counted at all had she loved him.