n appealing, as of the
heart that dares not believe and yet must believe or suffer.

"It is madness," she added. "It is not true--how can it be true!"

Yet it all had the look of reality--the voice had the right ring, the
face had truth, the bearing was gallant; the force and power of the man
overwhelmed her.

She reached out her hand tremblingly as though to push him back. "It
cannot be true," she said. "To think--in one day!"

"It is true," he answered, "true as that I stand here. One day--it is
not one day. I knew you years ago. The seed was sown then, the flower
springs up to-day, that is all. You think I can't know that it is love I
feel for you? It is admiration; it is faith; it is desire too; but it is
love. When you see a flower in a garden, do you not know at once if you
like it or no? Don't you know the moment you look on a landscape, on a
splendid building, whether it is beautiful to you? If, then, with these
things one knows--these that haven't any speech, no life like yours or
mine--how much more when it is a girl with a face like yours, when it
is a mind noble like yours, when it is a touch that thrills, and a voice
that drowns the heart in music! Guida, believe that I speak the truth.
I know, I swear, that you are the one passion, the one love of my life.
All others would be as nothing, so long as you live, and I live to look
upon you, to be beside you."

"Beside me!" she broke in, with an incredulous irony fain to be
contradicted, "a girl in a village, poor, knowing nothing, seeing no
farther"--she looked out towards Jersey--"seeing no farther than the
little cottage in the little country where I was born."

"But you shall see more," he said, "you shall see all, feel all, if you
will but listen to me. Don't deny me what is life and breathing and
hope to me. I'll show you the world; I'll take you where you may see and
know. We will learn it all together. I shall succeed in life. I shall
go far. I've needed one thing to make me do my best for some one's sake
beside my own; you will make me do it for your sake. Your ancestors
were great people in France; and you know that mine, centuries ago, were
great also--that the d'Avranches were a noble family in France. You and
I will win our place as high as the best of them. In this war that's
coming between England and France is my chance. Nelson said to me the
other day--you have heard of him, of young Captain Nelson, the man
they're pointing to in the flee