ome rushing at his face.
He withdrew from it, and leaning on the sill looked down at her. What
flower-like delicacy she had! There flashed across him the memory of a
drooping blossom, which, in the Spring, he had seen her throw into the
flames; with the words: "I can't bear flowers to fade, I always want to
burn them." He could see again those waxen petals yield to the fierce
clutch of the little red creeping sparks, and the slender stalk
quivering, and glowing, and writhing to blackness like a live thing.
And, distraught, he began:

"I can't live a lie. What right have I to lead, if I can't follow? I'm
not like our friend Courtier who believes in Liberty. I never have, I
never shall. Liberty? What is Liberty? But only those who conform to
authority have the right to wield authority. A man is a churl who
enforces laws, when he himself has not the strength to observe them. I
will not be one of whom it can be said: 'He can rule others,
himself----!"

"No one will know."

Miltoun turned away.

"I shall know," he said; but he saw clearly that she did not understand
him. Her face had a strange, brooding, shut-away look, as though he had
frightened her. And the thought that she could not understand, angered
him.

He said, stubbornly: "No, I can't remain in public life."

"But what has it to do with politics? It's such a little thing."

"If it had been a little thing to me, should I have left you at Monkland,
and spent those five weeks in purgatory before my illness? A little
thing!"

She exclaimed with sudden fire:

"Circumstances aye the little thing; it's love that's the great thing."

Miltoun stared at her, for the first time understanding that she had a
philosophy as deep and stubborn as his own. But he answered cruelly:

"Well! the great thing has conquered me!"

And then he saw her looking at him, as if, seeing into the recesses of
his soul, she had made some ghastly discovery. The look was so mournful,
so uncannily intent that he turned away from it.

"Perhaps it is a little thing," he muttered; "I don't know. I can't see
my way. I've lost my bearings; I must find them again before I can do
anything."

But as if she had not heard, or not taken in the sense of his words, she
said again:

"Oh! don't let us alter anything; I won't ever want what you can't give."

And this stubbornness, when he was doing the very thing that would give
him to her utterly, seemed to him unreasonable.