harshly. His
hands were clenched and rigid at his sides.

Almost instinctively she began to plead with him as one who pleads for
freedom. "Ah, but listen a moment! You have your life to live. Your
career means very much to you. Marriage means hindrance to a man like
you. Marriage means loitering by the way. And there is no time to
loiter. You have taken up a big thing, and you must carry it through.
You must put every ounce of yourself into it. You must work like a
galley slave. If you don't you will be--a failure."

"Who told you that?" he demanded.

She met the fierceness of his eyes unflinchingly. "I know it. Everyone
knows it. You have given yourself heart and soul to India, to the
Empire. Nothing else counts--or ever can count now--in the same way. It
is quite right that it should be so. You are a builder, and you must
follow your profession. You will follow it to the end. And you will do
great things,--immortal things." Her voice shook a little. "But you must
keep free from all hampering burdens, all private cares. Above all, you
must not think of marriage with a woman whose chief desire is to escape
from India and all that India means, whose sympathies are utterly alien
from her, and whose youth has died a violent death at her hands. Oh,
don't you see the madness of it? Surely you must see!"

A quiver of deep feeling ran through her words. She had not meant to go
so far, but she was driven, driven by a force that would not be denied.
She wanted him to see the matter with her eyes. Somehow that seemed
essential now. Things had gone so far between them. It was intolerable
now that he should misunderstand.

But as she ceased to speak, she abruptly realized that the effect of her
words was other than she intended. He had listened to her with a rigid
patience, but as her words went into silence it seemed as if the iron
will by which till then he had held himself in check had suddenly
snapped.

He stood for a second or two longer with an odd smile on his face and
that in his eyes which startled her into a momentary feeling that was
almost panic; then with a single, swift movement he bent and caught her
to him.

"And you think that counts!" he said. "You think that anything on earth
counts--but this!"

His lips were upon hers as he ended, stopping all protest, all
utterance. He kissed her hotly, fiercely, holding her so pressed that
above the wild throbbing of her own heart she felt the deep, strong beat
of h