with me
through life something you cannot take away if you would,--the ideal
which these weeks have held up before me. If it is not for your best
happiness to marry me, loving you as I do, I would not have you do it.
The matter is in your hands--a simple 'Yes' or 'No' is all I ask."

"But life is too complicated to be settled by a word like that. It
could not be 'Yes'--but what if it is 'No'?"

She paused a moment, and then, hurried on by a tidal wave of feeling,
she burst out: "Oh, I don't suppose you can understand it; but much as
I like you,--and I do like you now,--I feel as though if I promised to
marry you, I might absolutely hate you."

"Oh, yes," Flint answered quietly, "I can quite understand it; I think
I should feel in the same way if I were not perfectly sure I loved a
person."

Winifred felt herself touched by his quick response and perfect
comprehension of her state of mind; but her feeling was too intense,
too direct and too importunate, to be stayed in its utterance.

"I cannot marry you. I never could promise. I am sure of it. Forgive
me!"

Flint rose and stood by the mantel, toying absently with a bronze
model of the Praxiteles Faun which rested on its shelf.

"It is all right," he said, "and I shall always thank you for it all,
and say God bless you, whatever happens; only for a while I must go
away and make my life over a bit in the light of all this."

"Why must you go away?"

"Because--" Here Flint paused, and began to walk the floor
impatiently. "Oh, if you can ask that, I could not make you
understand. It is useless to go on talking."

"No," said Winifred, now with fuller command of herself, "it is not
useless; it is necessary. We must make each other understand. If we
cannot do it now, how much less afterward! It always seems to me as if
it were selfish folly in men and women to act as if their love were
the only reality in the world, so that they forget everything that
they owe to other people. Yes," she added, gathering strength as she
went on, "I think it would be selfish in you to consider only
yourself, or even yourself and me, in this matter, and I think it
would be foolish if--if you really care for me, as you say you do, to
throw away all my interest and regard and sympathy just because I do
not consent to marry you. If you would only put that idea out of your
head, I think I could be of some service to you. I know you could be
of great service to me."

As Winifred uttere