not let me know."

"You will find a message at your rooms when you get back."

He walked up and down the room. He knew at once that all he had done
hitherto had been in vain. The battle was still before him. She sat
and watched him with an inscrutable smile. Once as he passed her, she
laid her hand upon his arm. He stopped at once.

"Your white flower was born to die and to wither," she said. "A
night's frost would have killed it as surely as the lowland air. It is
like these violets." She took a bunch from her bosom. "This morning
they were fresh and beautiful. Now they are crushed and faded! Yet
they have lived their life."

She threw them down upon the floor.

"Do you think a woman is like that?" she said softly. "You are very,
very ignorant! She has a soul."

He held out his hand.

"A soul to keep white and pure. A soul to give back--to God!"

Again she smiled at him slowly, and shook her dark head. "You are like
a child in some things! You have lived so long amongst the dry bones
of scholarship, that you have lost your touch upon humanity. And of
us women, you know--so very little. You have tried to understand us
from books. How foolish! You must be my disciple, and I will teach
you."

"It is not teaching," he cried; "it is temptation."

She turned upon him with a gleam of passion in her eyes.

"Temptation!" she cried. "There spoke the whole selfishness of the
philosopher, the dilettante in morals! What is it that you fear? It is
the besmirchment of your own ideals, your own little code framed and
moulded with your own hands. What do you know of sin or of purity,
you, who have held yourself aloof from the world with a sort of
delicate care, as though you, forsooth, were too precious a thing to
be soiled with the dust of human passion and human love! That is where
you are all wrong. That is where you make your great mistake. You
have judged without experience. You speak of a soul which may be
stained with sin; you have no more knowledge than the Pharisees of old
what constitutes sin. Love can never stain anything! Love that is
constant and true and pure is above the marriage laws of men; it is
above your little self-constructed ideals; it is a thing of Heaven and
of God! You wrote to me like a child,--and you are a child, for until
you have learnt what love is, you are without understanding."

Suddenly her outstretched hands dropped to her side. Her voice became
soft and low; her dark eyes were dimmed