y soul to spend on him the garnered treasure of my
heart,--if this be unwomanly, I was indeed unsexed. I seemed exalted
out of myself, and full of power.

He heard me, and it moved him. He spoke again when I had finished. He
had not lifted his eyes to mine, and did not then. He said, "I could
not marry you: it would be the worst possible thing for both of us.
Your life would be miserable--mine most wretched. You must see that
there are other things in life besides love, and other things which
influence its happiness. Everything would separate us except our
personal affinity. Our education, our ideas, beliefs, our past lives,
our aims for the future, make a gulf between us. We could never bridge
it," He paused.

I laughed aloud: he looked at me then in surprise. "I laugh," said I,
"because I see how absurd it was to fancy that you loved me. A bridge
between us! If you loved me as I love you, our love would turn water
into land, melt mountains into plains: we would cross dry-shod to one
another."

"Do you love me so?" he said, his blue eyes gleaming, and making
a step toward me. I had power enough to make him feel, and feel
strongly, but that was not enough.

"No," I said, "Mr. Lawrence, you must take nothing from me now: I can
give nothing now."

"But if I want all?" he said.

I laughed again. "But you do not," I said. "I have told you I love
you and would marry you. You cannot, you say. Then that ends all
between us. I love you too much to be able to give you only what you
give me."

"We cannot marry," he repeated: "it would be ruin to both of us."

"Go away!" I said: "I would rather be alone." I was spent, and felt
feeble and weak.

"Let me tell you, first, that I admire you, esteem you, infinitely:
let me say this before I go; and you will think of me kindly." He said
this pleadingly.

I looked at him wonderingly. Did he not _yet_ know how much I loved
him? My courage and pride were ebbing fast away. Faintly I said,
"Before you go kneel down in front of me, and let me touch your
forehead with my lips." He did so, and I bent forward and took his
head in both my hands and kissed it. Somehow as I did it the strange
thought came to me that if I had ever had a son, just so I have kissed
his head. It was a yearning feeling, with such tenderness in it that
my heart seemed dissolving. Many times. I kissed it and held it, and
then, "Good-bye, my only love," I said. "I could have loved you very
well."

His eyes