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“Have I ever kept anything from you?”

“I mean that it might be better if you had gone to my father and told him what were your hopes—your prospects—told him that I had given you my promise, and that we meant that nothing should come between us.”

“That would have separated us in a moment—you agreed with me.”

“It might have prevented our meeting and corresponding; but if we were sure of ourselves, would it have separated us in reality? The only separation possible would be brought about by either of us loving some one else; and that we know would be impossible.”

“Dearest, that is the confession which comes from my heart daily—hourly—giving me strength to annihilate time and space, so that the years of our waiting seem no more than hours.”

“Oh, I know my own heart, Ernest; and that is why I feel that what I say is true: even though my father should refuse to listen to us, we should still not be separated. In fact I really feel that there would not be so great a barrier between us as there is now when we meet.”

“I think I know how you feel,” he said; but he had not the smallest notion of how she felt. Barrier? What barrier was she thinking of? He had not the smallest notion of what was in her mind—or for that matter, her heart.

And it seemed that she knew this for she made an attempt to explain herself.

“I mean that the secret which we share together forms a barrier between us—a sort of barrier. I feel every time that I see you, with my mother sitting by not knowing the compact which we have made—every one else too sitting by, having no idea that we are otherwise than free—I feel that I am treating them badly—that I am mean—underhanded—deceitful.”

“Ah, my Josephine... Do you fancy that any one suspects?—your friend, Miss Severn?—she is clever—she has been saying something that has frightened you?”

“Oh, cannot you even see that it would be a positive relief if any one was to suspect anything—if any one were to speak out?”

“Good heavens! What a state of nervousness you must have allowed yourself to fall into when you would feel ruin to be a relief to you.”

“Ruin?”

“Ruin, I say; because I know that in such a case I should have no chance of getting your father’s consent—yes, and not only so: when he came to learn the truth—to be made aware of my presumption he would turn his party against me, and my career would be ruined. Do you think that I am not capable of doing something in the world, Josephine, that you would stand by and see my career ruined?”

“I have every belief in your ability, only—I am not sure that a man should think so much of his career—no, I don’t mean that—I only mean that prudence and—and a career may be bought too dearly.”

“Prudence—bought too dear?”

“I wonder if, after all, I am so very different from other women in thinking that love is more to be preferred than a career.”

“Of course it is, my dearest; but—heavens above, Josephine, would you do me the injustice to believe that I would ask you to make what all the world would call an idiotic match—well, at least an imprudent match?”

“Imprudence? Who is there that can say what is a prudent marriage or what is an imprudent! If people love each other truly... psha! I have actually fallen into the strain of that detestable person—the Other Woman. I dare say that you are right and I am wrong. You see, you are a man and can reason these things out—prudent marriages and so forth; whereas I am only a woman—I cannot reason—I cannot even think—I can only feel.”

“Thank heaven for that, Josephine. Ah, believe me, I have looked at this matter from every standpoint, and I long ago came to see that there was nothing for it but to do as we are doing. Believe me, my dear girl, if you were content to marry me to-morrow just as I am, I would not be content to accept such a sacrifice on your part. And for heaven’s sake, dearest, do not let any one suspect that there exists between us this—this understanding. Ah, Josephine, you will agree with me in thinking that prudence is everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything—next, of course, to love. But above all, no one must be led to have the least suspicion——”

“Oh, have I not been prudence itself up to the present?” There was a suspicion in her voice—a suspicion of scorn,—he remembered that distinctly as he sat in his rooms recalling the whole scene an hour after it had been enacted. With that note—that half tone of scorn—their little chat ceased, for Guy Overton had come up and after him Lady Severn and Mr. Shirley, so that all that remained for him to do was to give a tender pressure with a look of courteous carelessness that was meant to prevent the possibility of any one with eyes fancying that there was tenderness in his pressure of Miss West’s fingers.

And now he was asking himself the question:

“Who is the Other Man?”

Ernest Clifton had a pretty good working acquaintance with the motives of men and women—not perhaps, quite so complete an acquaintance with these motives as he fancied he had, but still a very fair knowledge; and therefore he was asking himself that question:

“Who is the Other Man?”

He had had a good deal of trouble persuading Josephine during the preceding autumn to agree to engage herself to marry him. It had not been done in a minute. He had never before had such difficulty persuading a girl to give him such a promise. She was what physicians call “an obstinate case.” Hers was psychologically an obstinate case; but she had yielded at last to his treatment, and had given him her promise.

He flattered himself that it was his own cleverness—his own cleverness of argument—his own personality, for was not cleverness part of his personality?—that had brought her to perceive that she would be doing well to promise to marry him and at the same time to keep that promise a secret from her own father and mother and all the world besides. He remembered how he had impressed her by his story of his early struggles. He had appealed to her imagination by telling her how humble his career had been in its beginning—how, being the third son of a doctor in a village in Warwickshire, he had been thrown on the world to shift for himself when he was sixteen years of age—how he had, while working as a reporter on the staff of a Birmingham newspaper, starved himself in order to have money enough to pass University examinations and take a degree and, later on, to get called to the Bar. He told her how he had given up much of his time when practically behind the scenes at Birmingham to the study of the political machinery of a great party, with the result that he had worked himself into the position of the Secretary of the Organisation, becoming a power in his political party—a man with whom in critical times, the Head of the Cabinet had conferred before venturing upon legislation that might have a tendency to alienate a considerable proportion of his friends.