“What an old fool I am! You’re only trying to get out of answering my question. What I want to know is what call you have to pry into my friend’s private affairs?”

            I hesitated, struggling again with my anger. “If I’ve pried into them, as you call it, I did so, as you probably know, only after I’d asked Mrs. Ingram to be my wife.”

            Miss Wilpert’s laugh became an angry whinny. “Exactly! If indeed you didn’t ask her to be your wife to get her secret out of her. She’s so unsuspicious that the idea never crossed her mind till I told her what I thought of the trick you’d played on her.”

            “Ah, you suggested it was a trick? And how did she take the suggestion?”

            Miss Wilpert stood for a moment without speaking; then she came up to the table and brought her red fist down on it with a bang. “I tell you she’ll never marry you!” she shouted.

            I was on the verge of shouting back at her; but I controlled myself, conscious that we had reached the danger-point in our struggle. I said nothing, and waited.

            “Don’t you hear what I say?” she challenged me.

            “Yes; but I refuse to take what you say from any one but Mrs. Ingram.” My composure seemed to steady Miss Wilpert. She looked at me dubiously, and then dropped into the chair I had pushed forward. “You mean you want her to tell you herself?”

            “Yes.” I sat down also, and again waited.

            Miss Wilpert drew a crumpled handkerchief across her lips. “Well, I can get her to tell you—easy enough. She’ll do anything I tell her. Only I thought you’d want to act like a gentleman, and spare her another painful scene—”

            “Not if she’s unwilling to spare me one.”

            Miss Wilpert considered this with a puzzled stare. “She’ll tell you just what I’m telling you—you can take my word for that.”

            “I don’t want anybody’s word but hers.”

            “If you think such a lot of her I’d have thought you’d rather have gone away quietly, instead of tormenting her any more.” Still I was silent, and she pulled her chair up to the table, and stretched her thick arms across it. “See here, Mr. Severance—now you listen to me.”

            “I’m listening.”

            “You know I love Kate so that I wouldn’t harm a hair of her head,” she whimpered. I made no comment, and she went on, in a voice grown oddly low and unsteady: “But I don’t want to quarrel with you. What’s the use?”

            “None whatever. I’m glad you realize it.”

            “Well, then, let’s you and me talk it over like old friends. Kate can’t marry you, Mr. Severance. Is that plain? She can’t marry you, and she can’t marry anybody else. All I want is to spare her more scenes. Won’t you take my word for it, and just slip off quietly if I promise you I’ll make it all right, so she’ll bear you no ill-will?”

            I listened to this extraordinary proposal as composedly as I could; but it was impossible to repress a slight laugh. Miss Wilpert took my laugh for an answer, and her discoloured face crimsoned furiously. “Well?”

            “Nonsense, Miss Wilpert. Of course I won’t take your orders to go away.”

            She rested her elbows on the table, and her chin on her crossed hands. I saw she was making an immense effort to control herself. “See here, young man, now you listen…”

            Still I sat silent, and she sat looking at me, her thick lower lip groping queerly, as if it were feeling for words she could not find.

            “I tell you—” she stammered.

            I stood up. “If vague threats are all you have to tell me, perhaps we’d better bring our talk to an end.”

            She rose also. “To an end? Any minute, if you’ll agree to go away.”

            “Can’t you see that such arguments are wasted on me?”

            “You mean to see her?”

            “Of course I do—at once, if you’ll excuse me.”

            She drew back unsteadily, and put herself between me and the door.