ut I cannot tell you."

"You have not considered me, Chris," she went on gently.

"I know, I know," he broke in.

"You cannot have considered me. You do not know what I have to bear from
my people because of you."

"I did not think they felt so very unkindly toward me," he said
bitterly.

"It is true. They can scarcely tolerate you. They do not show it to you,
but they almost hate you. It is I who have had to bear all this. It was
not always so, though. They liked you at first as... as I liked you. But
that was four years ago. The time passed by--a year, two years; and then
they began to turn against you. They are not to be blamed. You spoke no
word. They felt that you were destroying my life. It is four years, now,
and you have never once mentioned marriage to them. What were they to
think? What they have thought, that you were destroying my life."

As she talked, she continued to pass her fingers caressingly through his
hair, sorrowful for the pain that she was inflicting.

"They did like you at first. Who can help liking you? You seem to draw
affection from all living things, as the trees draw the moisture from
the ground. It comes to you as it were your birthright. Aunt Mildred and
Uncle Robert thought there was nobody like you. The sun rose and set in
you. They thought I was the luckiest girl alive to win the love of a man
like you. 'For it looks very much like it,' Uncle Robert used to say,
wagging his head wickedly at me. Of course they liked you. Aunt Mildred
used to sigh, and look across teasingly at Uncle, and say, 'When I think
of Chris, it almost makes me wish I were younger myself.' And Uncle
would answer, 'I don't blame you, my dear, not in the least.' And then
the pair of them would beam upon me their congratulations that I had won
the love of a man like you.

"And they knew I loved you as well. How could I hide it?--this great,
wonderful thing that had entered into my life and swallowed up all my
days! For four years, Chris, I have lived only for you. Every moment was
yours. Waking, I loved you. Sleeping, I dreamed of you. Every act I have
performed was shaped by you, by the thought of you. Even my thoughts
were moulded by you, by the invisible presence of you. I had no end,
petty or great, that you were not there for me."

"I had no idea of imposing such slavery," he muttered.

"You imposed nothing. You always let me have my own way. It was you
who were the obedient slave. You did for me with