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 Her passion was exhausted, but she was resolute still. She didn't mean all she was about to say, but it was well to make him think she did. His mother had said he needed to be broken. Very well, the time had come for that, and she would do it thoroughly while about it. In the tone of one who lays a wreath of immortelles upon the grave of love, she began:

"Things can never be the same between us, George." Her voice was carefully restrained so as to get into just the right regret for some sublime ecstasy that was now forever past. "You've destroyed something—something that will never come again. If you had plotted deliberately against the beautiful perfection of our union, you could not have succeeded more completely than you have. That aura of wonder, that halo of romantic admiration with which I have invested you, is gone, George—gone, broken, dissipated, van—"

There is such a thing as the last straw.

"Sa-a-ay!" George demanded with indignant, self-accusing emphasis, and the manner of the man completely bewildered. "What's the matter with us two people, anyway?" Then while his eye was still upon her there came to him a gleam of inspiration.

"Could it," he blurted explosively, "could it be that cursed Englishman, I wonder?"

"Sir Brian!—"