What was this?
Why was she rejected?
Had she ceased to please?
She stood here offering her wares, and he would none of them! And yet they were all his! His to take and keep, not his to refuse though! In her quick petulant nature, a moment ago on fire with hope, thwarted love and wounded vanity wrought.
The schoolmaster that there is in all men, to the despair of all girls and most women, was now completely in possession of Archie.

He had passed a night of sermons, a day of reflection; he had come wound up to do his duty; and the set mouth, which in him only betrayed the effort of his will, to her seemed the expression of an averted heart.

It was the same with his constrained voice and embarrassed utterance; and if so--if it was all over--the pang of the thought took away from her the power of thinking.
He stood before her some way off.

"Kirstie, there's been too much of this.

We've seen too much of each other." She looked up quickly and her eyes contracted.