tenderly:

"Dear saint, sweet would-be martyr, you _shall_ not sacrifice your long
life's happiness to me. Rather than live on sane and sober, to see you
famishing beside me for the want of Love, I would die a thousand deaths,
Lynette! Try to believe it. You shall be free! You must be free, my
child!"

She winced as though he had stabbed her, and cried out:

"Why do you harp continually upon your death? I will not listen to you! If
I do not desire to be 'free,' as you term it, what barrier is there
between us now?"

He said, amazed:

"What barrier? Do you ask what barrier? Your love--for that other man!"

"There is no other man!" She looked him full in the eyes now, with a
lovely colour dyeing her sweet cheeks, and an exquisite quivering
wistfulness about her mouth. She moved so near that her fragrant breath
fanned warm upon his eyelids. "There is no man but you--there will never
be any other man!... Dearest"--her hands were on his shoulders; her bosom
rose and fell close to his broad breast--"I have been very slow at
learning. But--Owen!--I love you as your wife should love!"

"You cannot!" He stepped back sharply, and her hands fell from him. "You
shall not! I am not worthy. I thought so once.... I know better now. Do
not deceive yourself. Love cannot be compelled at will, and I have ceased
to wish--to desire yours! All I want now is rest and silence and
forgetfulness--where alone they may be found!" He drew a breath of
weariness.

"If you have ceased to wish for love from me, that is my punishment," she
said, very pale. "For without yours I cannot live! God hears me speak the
truth!"

"Lynette!..."

He swayed like a tree cut through and falling. She caught his hands, and
drew them to her heart.

"I have been blind and deaf and senseless. I am changed, I am altered--I
am awake at last! I know how great and precious is the love you have given
me.... Do not tell me it is mine no longer! Owen, if you do that, it is I
who shall die!"

A sob tore its way through him. His great frame quivered. His mask-like
immobility broke up ... was gone. Her own tears falling, she stretched her
arms to him; yet while his eyes devoured her, his arms hungered for her,
he delayed, knitting his brows. She caught a word or two, whispered
brokenly. He asked himself: "Can this be Love?"

"It is Love! Owen, I kissed you one night when I found you sleeping! When
will you kiss me back again?"

He cried out wildly upon God, and