"Not so fast, young lady," continued he in answer to that gleam.
"It is equally true that you've got to marry me."

"But I shall not!" she cried. "Besides, it isn't true."

"It IS true," replied he. "You may refuse to marry me, just as a
man may refuse to run when the dynamite blast is going off. Yes,
you can refuse, but--you'd not be your grandmother's granddaughter
if you did."

"Really!" She was so surcharged with rage that she was shaking
with it, was tearing up her handkerchief in her lap.

"Yes, indeed," he assured her, tranquil as a lawyer arguing a
commercial case before a logic-machine of a judge. "If you do not
marry me all your friends will say I jilted you. I needn't tell
you what it would mean in your set, what it would mean as to your
matrimonial prospects, for you to have the reputation of having
been turned down by me--need I?"

She was silent; her head down, her lips compressed, her fingers
fiercely interlaced with the ruins of her handkerchief.

"It is necessary that you marry," said he summing up. "It is
wisest and easiest to marry me, since I am willing. To refuse
would be to inflict an irreparable injury upon yourself in order
to justify a paltry whim for injuring me."

She laughed harshly. "You are frank," said she.