o
the open like this, but that's not me, myself--the man who loves you,
who would pass through fire for you, who has dreamed of you and watched
and waited through the long years for your coming; and now that you
have come, you surely can't blame me for what I cannot help--for loving
you and telling you so in my own way?"

She tried in vain to stifle the emotion his words aroused. She had set
out with the intention of wringing this avowal from him in jest, but how
differently it affected her now that she heard it. She forgot her anger,
everything, in fact, as she listened to the flow of his passion and
longed to hear him continue. Every note of his voice thrilled her as it
did on the day she first saw him. She remembered that she experienced a
peculiar sensation at the time; that his appearance reminded her of the
heroic type of manhood which the ancients had sought to depict in their
marbles. In him she had unconsciously recognized the true spirit of the
Argonaut on whose brow rests the star of empire. She did not idealize
him; she simply recognized him for what he was--a man; one in whose soul
the sentiment and enthusiasm of youth still sat enthroned, not smothered
by the crushing process of modern civilization which was the case with
the men she knew. A terror seized her as she compared the latter to him,
and beheld how small they appeared beside him.

"Miss Van Ashton," he continued passionately, "you wouldn't thank me if
I continued to bandy words with the woman I love, whose presence has
become the sunshine of life to me. The whole world has become filled
with song since you came into my life. Music and laughter have taken the
place of loneliness and despair. Flowers spring from the earth where
your feet rest! Don't imagine that you can ever estrange yourself from
me. Wherever you are, by day or by night, waking or dreaming, I also
will be there and ever whispering: 'Bessie Van Ashton, I love you--you
have filled my life so completely I can't live without you!'"

Had her face been turned toward him, he would have seen that it was
radiant, that her eyes shone with unusual brilliancy, that her hands
trembled beneath the folds of her scarf where she had concealed them.

"Bessie, sweet--"

"Stop!" she cried, almost in a voice of terror. "I've not given you
permission to speak to me, thus--to call me by name--"

"Then turn round and say you will be human once more! That you will talk
and walk and ride again! If yo