ttle faintly,
"I shall not be unhappy. You don't really know me if you think I
should love to be married so--so much as all that."

"It is you, Grizel," he replied, "who don't see that it is myself I am
pitying. It is I who want to be married as much as all that."

Her eyes shone with a soft light, for of course it was what she wanted
him to say. These two seemed to have changed places. That people could
love each other, and there the end, had been his fond philosophy and
her torment. Now, it was she who argued for it and Tommy who shook his
head.

"They can be very, very happy."

"No," he said.

"But one of them is."

"Not the other," he insisted; and of course it was again what she
wanted him to say.

And he was not always despairing. He tried hard to find a way of
bringing David to Elspeth's feet, and once, at least, the apparently
reluctant suitor almost succumbed. Tommy had met him near Aaron's
house, and invited him to come in and hear Elspeth singing. "I did not
know she sang," David said, hesitating.

"She is so shy about it," Tommy replied lightly, "that we can hear her
by stealth only. Aaron and I listen at the door. Come and listen at
the door."

And David had yielded and listened at the door, and afterwards gone in
and remained like one who could not tear himself away. What was more,
he and Elspeth had touched upon the subject of love in their
conversation, Tommy sitting at the window so engrossed in a letter to
Pym that he seemed to hear nothing, though he could repeat everything
afterwards to Grizel.

Elspeth had said, in her shrinking way, that if she were a man she
could love only a woman who was strong and courageous and
helpful--such a woman as Grizel, she had said.

"And yet," David replied, "women have been loved who had none of those
qualities."

"In spite of the want of them?" Elspeth asked.

"Perhaps because of it," said he.

"They are noble qualities," Elspeth maintained a little sadly, and he
assented. "And one of them, at least, is essential," she said. "A
woman has no right to be loved who is not helpful."

"She is helpful to the man who loves her," David replied.

"He would have to do for her," Elspeth said, "the very things she
should be doing for him."

"He may want very much to do them," said David.

"Then it is her weakness that appeals to him. Is not that loving her
for the wrong thing?"

"It may be the right thing," David insisted, "for him."

"And at that p