“My act?” he said. “What reason can there be on my side for withdrawing?”

I heard her breath quickening⁠—I felt her hand growing cold. In spite of what she had said to me when we were alone, I began to be afraid of her. I was wrong.

“A reason that it is very hard to tell you,” she answered. “There is a change in me, Sir Percival⁠—a change which is serious enough to justify you, to yourself and to me, in breaking off our engagement.”

His face turned so pale again that even his lips lost their colour. He raised the arm which lay on the table, turned a little away in his chair, and supported his head on his hand, so that his profile only was presented to us.

“What change?” he asked. The tone in which he put the question jarred on me⁠—there was something painfully suppressed in it.