f me?"

"I thought you called it love that sent you to Manila," she said
wonderingly, wounding without malice.

"It was love, I say. I loved her better than all the world and I have
not forgotten her. She will always be as dear to me as she was on the
night I lost her. You have not taken her place. You have gone farther
and inspired a love that is new, strange, overpowering--infinitely
greater, far different from the love I had known before. She was never
to me what you are. That is what drives me mad--mad, do you hear? I
have simply been overwhelmed by it."

"I must be dreaming," she murmured.

"I have tried to hide it from myself, but it has broken down all
barriers and floods the world for me."

"It is because we are here alone in this island--"

"No, no! Not that, I swear. It would have come sooner or later."

"You are not like other men. I have not thought of you as I see you now.
I cannot understand being loved by you. It hurts me to see that you are
in earnest. Oh, Hugh, how sorry I am," she cried, laying her hand upon
his arm. His heart dropped like lead. He saw that he had been
mistaken--she did not love him.

"You are learning that I am not the harlequin after all," he said
bitterly.

"There is no one in all the world so good and strong and true."

"You--you _will_ love me?"

"You must not ask that of me. I am still Lady Huntingford, a wife for
all we know. Yet if I loved you, I would tell you so. Have I not told
you that I cannot love? I have never loved. I never shall. Don't look
like that, Hugh. I would to God I could love you," she exclaimed. His
chin had sunk upon his breast and his whole body relaxed through sheer
dejection.

"I'll make you love me!" he cried after a moment's misery in the depths,
his spirits leaping high with the quick recoil. His eager hands seized
her shoulders and drew her close, so close that their bodies touched
and his impassioned eyes were within a few inches of hers of startled
blue. "I'll make you love me!"

"Please let me go. Please, Hugh," she murmured faintly.

"You must--you shall love me! I cannot live without you. I'll have you
whether you will or no," he whispered fiercely.

She did not draw back, but looked him fairly in the eye as she spoke
coldly, calmly, even with a sneer.

"You are master here and I am but a helpless woman. Would you force me
to forget that you have been my ideal man?"

"Tennys!" he cried, falling back suddenly. "You don't thin