"We should have been married." "Well"-- his keen, grey eyes swept her face--"there'll be no further postponement.

I shall marry you if the whole of your family chooses to die at the same moment.

Even if you yourself were dying you should be my wife--_my wife_--first." Roger's nature seemed to have undergone a curious change--an intensifying of his natural instincts, as it were.

Those long hours of apprehension during which he had really believed that Nan had left him, followed by her illness, when death so nearly snatched her from him, had strengthened his desire for possession, rousing his love to fever heat and setting loose within him a corresponding jealousy.
Nan could not understand his attitude towards her in the very least.
In the first instance he had yielded with a fairly good grace to Kitty's advice regarding the date of the wedding, but within a few days he had suddenly become restive and dissatisfied.

Had Nan known it, an apparently careless remark of Isobel Carson's had sown the seed.
"It's curious that your marriage with Nan still seems to hang on the horizon, Roger," she had remarked reflectively.