Page:Ann Veronica, a modern love story.djvu/318

 a man, and I know what I mean. It's a tremendous blow, of course—but it doesn't kill me. And the situation it makes!—the situation!"

Thus Manning, egotistical, inconsecutive, unreal. And Ann Veronica walked beside him, trying in vain to soften her heart to him by the thought of how she had ill-used him, and all the time, as her feet and mind grew weary together, rejoicing more and more that at the cost of this one interminable walk she escaped the prospect of—what was it?—"Ten thousand days, ten thousand nights" in his company. Whatever happened she need never return to that possibility.

"For me," Manning went on, "this isn't final. In a sense it alters nothing. I shall still wear your favor—even if it is a stolen and forbidden favor—in my casque.... I shall still believe in you. Trust you."

He repeated several times that he would trust her, though it remained obscure just exactly where the trust came in.

"Look here," he cried out of a silence, with a sudden flash of understanding, "did you mean to throw me over when you came out with me this afternoon?"

Ann Veronica hesitated, and with a startled mind realized the truth. "No," she answered, reluctantly.

"Very well," said Manning. "Then I don't take this as final. That's all. I've bored you or something.... You think you love this other man! No doubt you do love him. Before you have lived—"

He became darkly prophetic. He thrust out a rhetorical hand.

"I will MAKE you love me! Until he has faded—faded into a memory..."