for me there. When I get back we'll go about together
again, and as far as I can see I shan't have another big job to tackle
for some time after that--a year, perhaps two years, perhaps more."

She was silent for a moment, thinking. "Come now," he said, "that's not
stagnation. Is it?"

"No," she said unwillingly. "But it isn't what I came to you for." She
raised her eyes to his. "You know it isn't what I came to you for."

His face grew a little red. "You came to me," he said in a slower,
deeper voice, looking her straight in the eyes, "because I wanted you. I
want you now and I mean to have you. I want you as a wife. I will keep
absolutely true to you. You will be the only woman in the world to me.
But my work is my work. You will have no more say in that than I think
good for you. You will come with me wherever I think well to take you,
and I shall be glad enough to have you. Otherwise you will stay behind
and look after my home--and, I hope, my children."

Her face was a deep scarlet. She knew now what this marriage meant to
him. What it had meant to her, rushing into it so blindly, seemed a
foolish, far off thing. Her strongest feeling was a passionate desire
for her mother's presence. She was helpless, alone with this man, from
whom she felt a revulsion that almost overpowered her.

He sat for a full minute staring at her downcast face, his mouth firmly
set, a slight frown on his brows.

"Come now," he said more roughly. "You don't really know what you want.
But I know. Trust me, and before God, I will make you happy."

She hid her face in her hands. "Oh, I want to go home," she cried.

He shifted in his chair. The lines of his face did not relax. He must
set himself to master this mood. He knew he had the power, and he must
exercise it once for all. The mood must not recur again, or if it did it
must not be shown to him.

And there is no doubt at all that he would have mastered it. But as he
opened his mouth to speak, Cicely sitting there in front of him, crying,
with a white face and strained eyes, there were voices on the stairs,
the door opened, and Dick and Jim Graham came into the room.

CHAPTER XVI

THE PURSUIT

Cicely had not been missed from home until the evening. At tea-time she
was supposed to be at the dower-house, or else at the Rectory. It was
only when she had not returned at a quarter to eight, that the maid who
waited upon her and her mother told Mrs. Clinton that she was not