happy.--But if, because I
talk like this, you imagine I don't love you a hundred times better
even than yesterday--but you don't mean that! You know me better, my
Rachel!"

"Yes. Perhaps you're right--you ARE right. But I am right, too."

She came back, and sat down on the sofa again, and propped her chin on
her hand.

"You're tired to-night, dear--that's all. To-morrow things will look
different, and you'll see the truth of what I say. At night, things get
distorted----"

"No, no, one only really sees in the dark," she interrupted him.

--"but in the morning, one can smile at one's fears. Trust me, Louise,
and believe in me. All our future happiness depends on how we act just
now."

"Our future happiness ... yes," she said slowly. "But what of the
present?"

"Isn't it worth while sacrificing a brief present to a long future?"

She threw him a quick glance. "You talk like an orthodox Christian,
Maurice," she said, and added: "The present is here: it belongs to us.
The future is so unclear--who knows what it will bring us!"

"And isn't it just for that very reason that I speak as I do? If
everything lay clear and straight before us, do you think I should
bother about anything but you? It's the uncertainty of the whole thing
that troubles me. But however vague it is, I can tell you one thing
that will happen. And you know, dearest, what that is--the only
ambition I have left: to make you my wife at the earliest possible
moment."

She gazed at him meditatively.

"Why wouldn't you let me have my way at first?" he cried. "Why were you
against it? We could have kept it a secret: no one need have known a
thing about it. And I should never have asked you to go to England, or
to see my people. Call it narrow, if you must, I can't help it; it's
the only thing for us to do. Why won't you agree? Tell me what you have
against it. Listen!" He knelt down and put his arms round her. "We have
still a fortnight--that's time enough. Let us go to England to-morrow,
and be married without a word to anyone--in the first registrar's
office we find. Only marry me!"

"Would it make you love me more?"

She looked at him intently, turning the whole weight of her dark glance
upon him.

"You!" he said. "You to ask such a thing! You with these eyes ... and
this hair! And these hands!--I love every line of them ... You can't
understand, can you, you bundle of emotions, that I should care for you
as I do, and yet be able to talk s