es are born, not made;
and were you to marry in the station of life in which you see me, the
scales would some day drop from your eyes, and you would know that you
had been deceived by love. No, Mr. Prime, I should not be worthy to
become your wife were I to accept your offer. The difference between us
is too great, and the banker and his hired female clerk will never be on
an equality to the end of the world. I am sorry--ah, so sorry!--to wound
you thus, but I cannot permit you to throw your life away."

"Then you do not love me?" he asked, with a piteous cry.

"Love you?" I gave a little joyous laugh before I said, "I shall never
love any one else in the world."

It would take too long to repeat the efforts Mr. Prime made to lead me
to reconsider my resolution. Meanwhile I was racking my brains to find a
way of letting matters rest without depriving him utterly of hope. As he
said, the knowledge that my heart was his only increased the bitterness
of his despair. Happy as I was, I felt bewildered and uncertain. I
shrank instinctively from revealing my identity at once. I wanted time
to think. I scarcely knew the character of my own emotions. At one
moment I blushed with a sense of the web of deceit that I had wound
about him, and at another with the joyful consciousness of our mutual
love. What would he say when the truth was made known to him? Ah! but he
loves me for myself alone, was the answering thought.

I had continued to shake my head as the sole response to his burning
petition; but at last I turned to him and said that if he were content
to wait, say a year, and let his passion have time to cool, I might be
less obdurate. But in the interim he was to make no effort to discover
my whereabouts, or to follow me. He must not even write to me (perhaps I
had a secret idea that too many letters strangle love), but pursue the
tenor of his way as though I had never existed. If at the end of that
time he still wished me to become his wife, it might be I should no
longer refuse. It was better for us both, I said, that we should part
for the present. He must consider himself free as air, and I should
think him sensible if on reflection he strove to banish me from his
thoughts.

"A year is a long time," he answered.

"Long enough, almost, to make a fortune in, as well as to become wise
and prudent."

By making him wait, I should let the banking-scheme develop itself a
little further.

When by dint of my refusal t