her with comfort and prettiness, such as she loved
and knew how to contrive out of so little! To say,--"Let us belong
together. Make home with _me_!"

Satan, as an angel of light, entered into him. He knew he could not
say this to her as he ought to say it; as he would say it to a girl
of his own class whom father and mother would welcome. There was no
girl of his own class he had ever cared to say it to. This was the
first woman he had found, with whom the home thought joined itself.
And this could not rightly be. If he took her, he would no longer
have the things to give her. They would be cast out together. And
all he could do was to make pictures, of which he had never sold
one, or thought to sell one, in all his life. He would be just as
poor as she was; and he felt that he did not know how to be poor.
Besides, he wanted to be rich for her. He wanted to give her,--now,
right off,--everything.

Why shouldn't he give? Why shouldn't she take? He had plenty of
money; he was his father's only son. He meant right; so he said to
himself; and what had the world to do with it?

"I wish I could take care of you, Bel! Would you let me? Would you
go with me?"

The words seemed to have said themselves. The devil, whom he had let
have his heart for a minute, had got his lips and spoken through
them before he knew.

"Where?" asked Bel. "Home?"

"Yes,--home," said the young man, hesitating.

"Where your mother lives?"

Bel Bree's simplicity went nigh to being a stronger battery of
defense than any bristling of alarmed knowledge.

"No," said Morris Hewland. "Not there. It would not do for you, or
her either. But I could give you a little home. I could take care of
you all your life; all _my_ life. And I would. I will never make a
home for anybody else. I will be true to you, if you will trust
me,--always. So help me God!"

He meant it; there was no dark, deliberate sin in his heart, any
more than in hers; he was tempted on the tenderest, truest side of
his nature, as he was tempting her. He did not see why he should
not choose the woman he would live with all his life, though he knew
he could not choose her in the face of all the world, though he
could not be married to her in the Church of the Holy Commandments,
with bridesmaids and ushers, and music and flowers, and point lace
and white satin, and fifty private carriages waiting at the door,
and half a ton of gold and silver plate and verd antique piled up
for them