rvail the burden I shall be, by such help to you as I can afford?
Burden, is no word--I rake up a buried fever. I have partially lived it
down, and instantly I am covered with spots. The old false charges and
this plain offence make a monster of me.'

'And meanwhile you are at the disposal of the man who falsely charged
you and armed the world against you,' said Dacier.

'I can fly. The world is wide.'

'Time slips. Your youth is wasted. If you escape the man, he will have
triumphed in keeping you from me. And I thirst for you; I look to you
for aid and counsel; I want my mate. You have not to be told how you
inspire me? I am really less than half myself without you. If I am to
do anything in the world, it must be with your aid, you beside me. Our
hands are joined: one leap! Do you not see that after... well, it cannot
be friendship. It imposes rather more on me than I can bear. You are not
the woman to trifle; nor I; Tony, the man for it with a woman like you.
You are my spring of wisdom. You interdict me altogether--can you?--or
we unite our fates, like these hands now. Try to get yours away!'

Her effort ended in a pressure. Resistance, nay, to hesitate at
the joining of her life with his after her submission to what was a
scorching fire in memory, though it was less than an embrace, accused
her of worse than foolishness.

'Well, then,' said she, 'wait three days. Deliberate. Oh! try to know
yourself, for your clear reason to guide you. Let us be something better
than the crowd abusing us, not simple creatures of impulse--as we choose
to call the animal. What if we had to confess that we took to our heels
the moment the idea struck us! Three days. We may then pretend to a
philosophical resolve. Then come to me: or write to me.'

'How long is it since the old Rovio morning, Tony?'

'An age.'

'Date my deliberations from that day.'

The thought of hers having to be dated possibly from an earlier day,
robbed her of her summit of feminine isolation, and she trembled,
chilled and flushed; she lost all anchorage.

'So it must be to-morrow,' said he, reading her closely, 'not later.
Better at once. But women are not to be hurried.'

'Oh! don't class me, Percy, pray! I think of you, not of myself.'

'You suppose that in a day or two I might vary?'

She fixed her eyes on him, expressing certainty of his unalterable
stedfastness. The look allured. It changed: her head shook. She held
away and said: 'No, leave me