he room, then paused in
front of me and said--his words seem burned into my brain--"You are
a woman who deserves frankness, and I will be utterly and absolutely
frank with you. I have done very wrong in behaving as I have done.
I had no right, no justification, for it, and I beg you to forgive
me--humbly I beg it on my knees;" and he knelt before me.

I was bewildered and pained beyond measure. I thought I knew not what,
but a tissue of wild absurdities rushed through my brain to account
for his words--anything rather than think he did not love me.

"With many women this confession would be unnecessary," he went on.
"You are genuine and simple, and attach a real meaning to every word
and act, because you do not yourself speak or act without meaning. How
can I, then, part from you without asking your forgiveness for what I
have said and done?"

"Part from me!" I exclaimed, holding out my hands to him: he had risen
now. "Oh, Mr. Lawrence, let us be frank with one another. There is no
need to part. Do you think your poverty is any barrier between us? It
is but an added bond. Can I not work too? And we will learn to think
alike where we now differ. Why should we part? We love each other. Why
should we not marry? What can part us but our own wills? I love you,
you know it, and I think you love me; at least I am sure I could
teach you to love me." He stood while I spoke, his arms hanging by his
sides. What more I said I hardly know. I think--I am sure, indeed--I
told him, standing there, how I loved him. I felt I must speak it once
to one human being. A great foresight came to me: I seemed to see my
life stretching before me, long, lonely, desolate: no other love like
this could come, full well I knew that, and I could not enter on that
dreary path without setting free my soul. Yes, I spoke out to him.
Words of power they were--power and fire and longing. Perhaps I
alone, of all women, have told a man of my love when I knew it to be
hopeless. My hope had died when he first spoke. Had he loved me, he
had spoken otherwise. That I was woman enough to see; but if it be
unwomanly to feel in every pulse-throb the need of expression, to know
that I should die of suppressed passion, tenderness, love, if I did
not speak it all, did not tell him once how I loved him, how I could
have lived his servant, his slave, happy and content--how his smile
seemed the sun and his caresses heaven to me--how I was hungry with
the hunger of my ver