or when, or where, as long as I can have you for mine, to keep for ever,
to love, to watch over, to worship.... Dear--will you speak to me?"

She shook her head, desolately, where it lay now against his knees, amid
its tumbled hair.

Then he asked again for her forgiveness--almost fiercely, for passion
still swayed him with every word. He told her he loved her, adored her,
could not endure life without her; that he was only too happy to take
her on any terms she offered.

"Louis," she said in a voice made very small and low by the crossed arms
muffling her face, "I am wondering whether you will ever know what love
is."

"Have I not proved that I love you?"

"I--don't know what it is you have proved.... We were engaged to each
other--and--and--"

"I thought you cared nothing for such conventions!"

She began to cry again, silently.

"Valerie--darling--"

"No--you don't understand," she sobbed.

"Understand what, dearest--dearest--

"That I thought our love was its own protection--and mine."

He made no answer.

She knelt there silent for a little while, then put her hand up
appealingly for his handkerchief.

"I have been very happy in loving you," she faltered; "I have promised
you all there is of myself. And you have already had my best self. The
rest--whatever it is--whatever happens to me--I have promised--so that
there will be nothing of this girl called Valerie West which is not all
yours--all, all--every thought, Louis, every pulse-beat--mind, soul,
body.... But no future day had been set; I had thought of none as yet.
Still--since I knew I was to be to you what I am to be, I have been very
busy preparing for it--mind, soul, my little earthly possessions, my
personal affairs in their small routine.... No bride in your world, busy
with her trousseau, has been a happier dreamer than have I, Louis. You
don't know how true I have tried to be to myself, and to the truth as I
understand it--as true as I have been to you in thought and deed....
And, somehow, what threatened--a moment since--frightens me, humiliates
me--"

She lifted her head and looked up at him with dimmed eyes:

"You were untrue to yourself, Louis--to your own idea of truth. And you
were untrue to me. And for the first time I look at you, ashamed and
shamed."

"Yes," he said, very white.

"Why did you offer our love such an insult?" she asked.

He made no answer.

"Was it because, in your heart, you hold a girl lightly who pro