f what
makes me love you."

"That is all," he said. "I could no more emancipate myself from my work
than I can from my ideals; they are part of me. I am perfectly poor."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, softly, "don't, don't speak of that."

He turned his fine eyes on her with a light in them whose courage and
beauty she did not understand.

"Why not speak of it?" he asked quietly. "I am not ashamed of the fact
that I have no money. Such as money is, I shall make it some day, and I
shall not value it then any more than I do now. It is necessary, I
begin to see, but only that. Its only importance is the importance we
give to it: to keep straight with our kind; to justify our existence,
and," he continued, "to help the next man."

His face took a firmer expression. More than in his recitation of his
life he seemed to forget her. As he said so, his arms fell a little way
away from her--she grew cold--he seemed a stranger. Only for a moment,
however, for he turned, put out his arms, and drew her to him. He kissed
her as he had not kissed her yet, and after a few moments said--

"Mary, I bring you my talent, and my manhood, and my courage--nothing
else--and I want it to be enough for you."

She said that it was. That it was more than enough.

Fairfax sighed, his arms dropped, he smiled and looked at her, and
said--

"I wonder if it is?" He glanced round the room quietly, with an
arrogance of which he was unconscious. "You must give all this up,
Mary."

"Must I?" She flushed and laughed. "You mean to say you want me to come
to Bohemia?"

"I want you to live as I can live," he said, "share what I must have ...
that is, I should ask you that if you married me now ..."

He watched her face. It was still illuminated. Her love for him was too
vital to be touched by this proposition which she did not wholly
understand.

"Most men shrink," Fairfax said, "from taking the woman they love from
her luxuries. I believe that I shall not be poor very long. It will be a
struggle. If you marry me now, you will share it with me, otherwise ..."
He waited a moment.

And she repeated: "Otherwise, Antony?"

"I shall go away," he answered, "and not come back again until I am rich
and great."

CHAPTER XVII

After he had left her he was dazed and incredulous. His egoism, his
enthusiasm, his idea of his own self-sufficiency seemed preposterous. A
man in love should entertain no idea but the thought of the woman
herself. He began