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22 And that love belonged already to a spirit as wild as Daintree’s, but lighter, brighter, and if not incomparably braver and manlier, then changed indeed.

She rose and laid a hand upon the trembling arm, and very gently said: “You have paid me the greatest compliment, Mr. Daintree, which they say a man can pay a woman. You know that I like you. Indeed there is no one for whom I feel a heartier sympathy. But love you I do not—it is best to be perfectly frank.”

“You do not!” he only said.

“And I never can.”

“Why never?” he cried irritably. “What do you mean by saying that? Is my family not good enough for you? Am I not clever enough?” In the midst of his love-making he had lost his temper, but Claire was at once too proud and too kind to rebuke this ebullition; and presently he continued in a merely injured tone, “It isn’t as if I was obliged to go back to New South Wales. Why should I? It would be a wretched place for you, and I am sick of it. I thought I could never bear this cruel old country again; but I could—I can—with you!” He would not see that he had got his answer. An overweening vanity was among his salient faults.

“It can never be,” repeated Claire, decidedly.

“But why never? That’s what I can’t fathom. There is no one else, is there?”

“There—is.”

In an instant he dropped the hand which he had just taken, and which she had not the heart to withdraw. His trembling ceased. She heard him breathing hard and through his teeth.