haps it is in bad taste,
but I will risk that--I want to relieve my soul, it needs open
confession. This is the truth. You have troubled me ever since the first
time I saw you--and you did not know it--as you sat under the edge of
the cliff at Marlstone and held out your arms to the sea. It was only
your beauty that filled my mind then. As I passed by you it seemed as if
all the life in the place were crying out a song about you in the wind
and the sunshine. And the song stayed in my ears; but even your beauty
would be no more than an empty memory to me by now if that had been all.
It was when I led you from the hotel there to your house, with your hand
on my arm, that--what was it that happened? I only knew that your
stronger magic had struck home, and that I never should forget that day,
whatever the love of my life should be. Till that day I had admired as I
should admire the loveliness of a still lake; but that day I felt the
spell of the divinity of the lake. And next morning the waters were
troubled, and she rose--the morning when I came to you with my
questions, tired out with doubts that were as bitter as pain, and when I
saw you without your pale, sweet mask of composure--when I saw you moved
and glowing, with your eyes and your hands alive, and when you made me
understand that for such a creature as you there had been emptiness and
the mere waste of yourself for so long. Madness rose in me then, and my
spirit was clamoring to say what I say at last now--that life would
never seem a full thing again because you could not love me, that I was
taken forever in the nets of your black hair and by the incantation of
your voice--"

"Oh, stop!" she cried, suddenly throwing back her head, her face flaming
and her hands clutching the cushions beside her. She spoke fast and
disjointedly, her breath coming quick. "You shall not talk me into
forgetting common sense. What does all this mean? Oh! I do not recognize
you at all--you seem another man. We are not children--have you
forgotten that? You speak like a boy in love for the first time. It is
foolish, unreal--I know that if you do not. I will not hear it. What has
happened to you?" She was half sobbing. "How can these sentimentalities
come from a man like you? Where is your self-restraint?"

"Gone!" exclaimed Trent with an abrupt laugh. "It has got right away! I
am going after it in a minute." He looked gravely down into her eyes. "I
don't care so much now. I never coul