She stamped her foot. I could not have imagined she could be so angry.

"Wait till I have done," she said--"I do not know what my father thinks
of me; but I suppose that you and he have designed all this; and led me
on to make a fool of myself--Oh! Let me go! let me go!"

Oh! the triple fool that I was! Yet who had ever taught me the ways of
love, or what women mean, or what their hearts are like? If I had been
one half the man that I thought myself, I would have seized her there,
and forced back her foolishness with kisses, and vowed that, conspirator
or not, she must have me; that we knew one another too well to play
false coin like this. Or I should have blazed at her in return; and told
her that she lied in thinking I was as base as that. Why, I should have
just borne myself like a lover to whom love is all, and dignity and
wounded pride nothing; for what else is there but love, sacred or
profane, in the whole world that God has made? If I had done that! If
only I had done that then! But I suppose that I was no lover then.

So I drew back, smarting and wounded; and let her go by; and a minute
later I heard the door of her chamber slam behind her, and the key turn.

* * * * *

For myself I went out very slowly, five minutes after, and upstairs to
my own chamber, and began to consider what things I must take with me on
the morrow; for I would not stay another day in the house where I had
been so insulted and denied.