There was in her heart a sudden feeling of regret.

It was the feeling that the keenest sportsman sometimes has when some majestic monarch of the forest falls before his merciless rifle--a sudden passing desire that it might be undone.
"Why not ?" he asked.

He was desperately in earnest, and that which made him a good sportsman--an unmatched big-game hunter, calm and self-possessed in any strait--gave him a strange deliberation now, which Millicent Chyne could not understand.

"Why not ?" "I do not know--because you mustn't." And in her heart she wanted him to say it again.
"I am not ashamed of it," he said, "and I do not see why I should not say it to you--or to any one else, so far as that goes." "No, never!" she cried, really frightened.

"To me it does not matter so much.