on her almost fiercely. "If I demand
your trust on this point--as I have a right to demand it on every
point--what then? Are you going to give me everything except that?"

She shook her head. "No, Max."

"What do you mean?" he demanded.

She answered him steadily enough. "I mean that unless you can tell me
the truth--the truth, Max," there was a piteous touch in her repetition
of the words--"I can never give you--anything."

"Meaning you won't marry me?" he said.

Steadily she answered him. "Yes, I mean just that."

He continued to hold her before him. His face grew harder, grimmer than
before. "And you think I will suffer myself to be thrown over?" he said.

That pierced her lethargy, quickened her to resistance. "I think you
have no choice," she said.

Max's jaw set itself like an iron clamp. "There you show your absolute
ignorance," he said, "of me--and of yourself."

"You couldn't hold me against my will," she said quickly.

"Could I not?" said Max.

Something of fear crept about her heart, hastening its beat. But she
faced him unflinching. "No," she said.

He was silent; but she had an inexplicable feeling that the green eyes
were drawing her gradually, mercilessly, against her will. Yet she
resisted them, summoning all her strength.

And then she became aware that his hold had tightened and grown close.
She awoke to the fact very suddenly, as one coming out of a trance, and
swiftly, nervously, she sought to free herself.

Instantly his arms were about her. He gathered her to him with a force
that compelled. He crushed her lips with his own in kisses so fierce and
so passionate that she winced from them in actual pain, not sparing her
till she sank in his arms, spent, unresisting, crying against his
shoulder.

He made no attempt to comfort her; his hold was sustaining, but grimly
devoid of all tenderness. Later she knew that he had fought a desperate
battle for her happiness and his own, and it was no moment for
relaxation.

He spoke to her at last, curtly, over her bowed head, "And you
think--you dare to think--that I have ever loved another woman."

"I don't know what to think," she whispered, hiding her face lower on
his breast.

"Then think this," he said, and there was a ring of iron in his voice,
"that for no slander whatever will I hold myself answerable, either to
you or to anyone else. I shall not defend myself from it. I shall not
deny it. And because of it I will not suffer myself