me; I am tired; I want to think it out alone."

Thorne stood silent, his head bent in thought. "Yes," he said
presently; "it will be better so. You are overwrought, and your mind
is worn with excitement; you need rest. To-morrow, next week, the week
after, this matter will wear a different aspect. I can wait, and I
will come again. It will be different then."

"It will never be different," the voice was low; the gray eyes had a
hopeless look.

Thorne repeated his assertion in the gentle, persistent tone of one who
is patient with the unreasonableness of a frightened child. His
determination to win success never faltered, rather it hardened with
opposition into adamant; but he was beginning to realize his blunder.
He had overwhelmed her; had brought about an upheaval of her world so
violent that, in her bewilderment, her dread of chaos, she
instinctively laid hold on the old supports and clung to them with
desperation. She must have time to think, to familiarize herself with
the strange emotions, to adapt herself to the changed conditions. Only
one other thing would he say. He held in reserve a card which he knew,
ere now, had proved all powerful with conscientious women. To gain his
end, he would stop at nothing; he took both her hands in his, and
played his card deliberately.

"Think over it well," he said, "weigh every argument, test every
scruple. My life is in your hands. I am not a religious man, nor a
good man, but you can make me both. Give me the heaven that I crave,
the heaven of your love, and I will be by it ennobled into faith in
that other heaven, of which it will be the foretaste. But refuse; deny
the soul that cries out to you; thrust aside the hands that seek to
clasp you, as the truest, noblest, holiest thing they have ever
touched, and--on your head be it. I have placed the responsibility in
your hands and there it rests."

With a lingering look into her eyes and a fervent pressure of her
hands, he turned and slowly left the room.

Back to the mind of the girl, standing motionless where he had left
her, came, unwished and unbidden, the memory of a summer night out
yonder beside the flowing river. She seemed to see again, the swaying
of the branches in the moonlight, and to hear the lulling wash of the
water against the shore; to hear also, a quiet, manly voice fighting
down its pain, lest the knowledge of it should wound her, saying,
simply and bravely: "Don't be unhappy about m