s beside him.

"Listen!" he said. "You asked--you shall know; whether you like or hate
me for it. I love you. Women have never come into my life; they've
always looked on me with pitying eyes. I would rather it were so. But
you--you--you are beautiful, with a heart like your face, both rare and
wonderful. Perhaps I love you so much because you are young and
healthy. It hurts me."

His eyes held such a piteously fearful look that Mavis was moved in
spite of herself. He went on:

"If my disposition were like my twisted body, it wouldn't matter. But I
love life, movement, struggling. Were I as I used to be, I should love
to have a beautiful, responsive woman for my own. I should love to have
you."

Before Mavis knew what she had done, she had put her hand on his. Then
he said, as if speaking to himself:

"What have I to offer besides a helpless, envious love? My wife would
be a nurse, not a mistress, as she should be."

"Stop! stop!" she pleaded.

"No, I will not stop," he cried, as he bent over to hold her head so
that her eyes looked into his. "You shall listen and then decide. I
love you. If it's good enough, I'm yours. You know what I have to
offer, and I ask you to be my wife because I can't help myself.
Because--"

Mavis had closed her eyes for fear that he should read her heart. He
passionately kissed the closed lids before sinking back exhausted in
his chair.

"Listen to me," said Mavis after a while. "It's I who am to blame. Let
me go away so that you can forget me."

"Forget you! forget you!" he cried. "No, you shall not go away; not
till you've said 'yes' or 'no' to what I ask."

"When shall I answer?"

"Give yourself time--only--"

"Only?"

"Don't keep me waiting longer than you can help."

For three days, Mavis drifted upon uncertain tides. She was borne
rapidly in one direction only to float as certainly in another. She
lacked sufficient strength of purpose to cast anchor and abide by the
consequences. She deplored her irresolution, but, try as she might, she
found it a matter of great difficulty to give her mind to the
consideration of Harold's offer. Otherwise, the most trivial happenings
imprinted themselves on her brain: the aspect of the food she ate, the
lines on her landlady's face, the flittings in and out of the front
door of the "dust-cloak" on its way to trumpery social engagements, the
while its mother minded the baby, all acquired in her eyes a prominence
foreign to their im