ve! My love! It is my very life for which I am pleading. Have
you no pity? No love for the man whose heart is calling you to come?"

Pocahontas shivered, and bent slightly forward--her face was white as
death, her eyes strange and troubled. The strength and fire of his
passion drew her toward him as a magnet draws steel. Was she yielding?
Would she give way?

Suddenly she started erect again, and drew back a step. All the
emotions, prejudices, thoughts of her past life; all the principles,
scruples, influences, amid which she had been reared, crowded back on
her and asserted their power. She could _not_ do this thing. A chasm
black as the grave, hopeless as death, yawned at her feet; a barrier as
high as heaven erected itself before her.

"I can not come," she wailed in anguish. "Have you no mercy?--no pity
for me? There is a barrier between us that I dare not level; a chasm I
can not cross."

"There is _no_ barrier," responded Thorne, vehemently, "and I will
acknowledge none. I am a free man; you are a free woman, and there is
no law, human or divine, to keep us asunder, save the law of your own
will. If there be a chasm--which I do not see; which I swear does not
exist--_I_ will cross it. If you can not come to me, I can come to
you; and I _will_. You are _mine_, and I will hold you--here in my
arms, on my breast, in my heart. Have you, and hold you, so help me
God!"

With a quick stride he crossed the small space between them, and stood
close, but still not touching her.

"Have you no pity?" she moaned.

"None," he answered hoarsely. "Have you any for me?--for us both? I
love you--how well, God knows, I was not aware until to-night--and you
love me I hope and believe. There is nothing between us save an idle
scruple, which even the censorious world does not share. I ask you to
commit no sin; to share no disgrace. I ask you to be my wife before
the face of day; before the eyes of men; in the sight of heaven!"

Could she be his wife in the sight of heaven? It was all so strange to
her, she could not understand. Words, carelessly heard and scarcely
heeded, came back to her, and rung their changes in her brain with
ceaseless iteration. It was like a knell.

"Nesbit?" she said wearily, using his name unconsciously, "listen and
understand me. In the eyes of the law, and of men you are free; but I
can not see it so. In my eyes you are still bound."

"I am _not_ bound," denied Thorne, fi