't know what I feel for you," she answered in an agonized voice,
her fingers tightening over the backs of her white hands. "If reverence
be love--if trust be love, infinite and absolute trust--if gratitude be
love--if emptiness after you are gone be a sign of it--yes, I love you.
If the power to see clearly only through you, to interpret myself only
by your aid be love, I acknowledge it. I tell you so freely, as of your
right to know. And the germ of which you spoke is you. You have grown
until you have taken possession of--of what is left of me. If I had
only been able to see clearly from the first, Peter, I should be another
woman to-day, a whole woman, a wise woman. Oh, I have thought of it
much. The secret of life was there at my side from the time I was able
to pronounce your name, and I couldn't see it. You had it. You stayed.
You took duty where you found it, and it has made you great. Oh, I don't
mean to speak in a worldly sense. When I say that, it is to express the
highest human quality of which I can think and feel. But I can't marry
you. You must see it."

"I cannot see it," he replied, when he had somewhat gained control of
himself.

"Because I should be wronging you."

"How?" he asked.

"In the first place, I should be ruining your career."

"If I had a career," he said, smiling gently, "you couldn't ruin it. You
both overestimate and underestimate the world's opinion, Honora. As my
wife, it will not treat you cruelly. And as for my career, as you call
it, it has merely consisted in doing as best I could the work that has
come to me. I have tried to serve well those who have employed me, and
if my services be of value to them, and to those who may need me in
the future, they are not going to reject me. If I have any worth in the
world, you will but add to it. Without you I am incomplete."

She looked up at him wonderingly.

"Yes, you are great," she said. "You pity me, you think of my
loneliness."

"It is true I cannot bear to picture you here," he exclaimed. "The
thought tortures me, but it is because I love you, because I wish to
take and shield you. I am not a man to marry a woman without love. It
seems to me that you should know me well enough to believe that, Honora.
There never has been any other woman in my life, and there never can be.
I have given you proof of it, God knows."

"I am not what I was," she said, "I am not what I was. I have been
dragged down."

He bent and lifted her han