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g round her, entering her heart, filling her whole being, a delicious and marvellous ecstasy. The pain and the trouble vanished. The treachery, the deceit, and the fall she had undergone were forgotten. She only knew that, if Trevor loved her, she loved him. She was about to speak when her eyes fell for a moment on a page of the manuscript she had just written. Like a flash, memory came back. It stung her cruelly as a serpent might sting. She sprang to her feet; she flung down his hand. "You don't know whom you are talking to. If you knew me just as I am, you would unsay all those words; and, Mr. Trevor, you can never know me as I am, never, and I can never marry you." "But do you love me? That is the point," said Trevor. "I--do not ask me. No--if you must know. How can I love anybody? I am incapable of love. Oh, go, go! do go! I don't love you: of course I don't. Don't think of me again. I am not for you. Try and love Kitty, and make Mrs. Aylmer happy. Go; do leave me! I am unworthy of you, absolutely, utterly." "But if I think differently?" said Trevor. He was very much troubled by her words; she spoke with such vehemence, and alluded to such extraordinary and to him impossible things, that he failed to understand her; then he said slowly: "You are stunned and surprised, but, darling, I am willing to wait, and my heart is yours. A man cannot take back his heart after he has given it, even though a woman does scorn it. But you won't be cruel to me; I cannot believe it, Florence. I will come again to-morrow and see you." He turned without speaking to her again and left the room. Florence never knew how she spent the rest of that day; but she had a dim memory afterwards that she worked harder during the succeeding hours than she had ever worked in her life before. Her brain was absolutely stimulated by what she had gone through, and she felt almost inclined to venture to write that Sunday-school paper which Tom Franks had so much desired. She was to go out that evening with the Franks. She was now, although the London season had by no means begun, a little bit in request in certain literary circles; and Tom Franks, who had taken her in tow, was anxious to bring her as much forward as possible. Edith and Tom were going to drive to a certain house in the suburbs where a literary lady, a Mrs. Simpson, a very fashionable woman, lived. Florence was to be the lioness of the evening, and Edith came in early
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