demand that you shall be my wife."

There was something in this which she did not know how to
answer;--but she did know, she was quite sure, that no word of his,
no tenderness either on his part or on her own, would induce her to
yield an inch. It was her duty to sacrifice herself for him,--for
reasons which were quite apparent to herself,--and she would do it.
The fortress of her inner purpose was safe, although he had succeeded
in breaking down the bulwark by which it had been her purpose to
guard it. He had claimed her love, and she had not been strong enough
to deny the claim. Let the bulwark go. She was bad at lying. Let her
lie as she might, he had wit enough to see through it. She would not
take the trouble to deny her love should he persist in saying that
it had been accorded to him. But surely she might succeed at last in
making him understand that, whether she loved him or no, she would
not marry him. "I certainly shall never be your wife," she said.

"And that is all?"

"What more, my lord?"

"You can let me go, and never wish me to return?"

"I can, my lord. Your return would only be a trouble to you, and a
pain to me. Another time do not turn your eyes too often on a young
woman because her face may chance to please you. It is well that
you should marry. Go and seek a wife, with judgment, among your own
people. When you have done that, then you may return and tell Marion
Fay that you have done well by following her advice."

"I will come again, and again, and again, and I will tell Marion Fay
that her counsels are unnatural and impossible. I will teach her to
know that the man who loves her can seek no other wife;--that no
other mode of living is possible to him than one in which he and
Marion Fay shall be joined together. I think I shall persuade her at
last that such is the case. I think she will come to know that all
her cold prudence and worldly would-be wisdom can be of no avail to
separate those who love each other. I think that when she finds that
her lover so loves her that he cannot live without her, she will
abandon those fears as to his future fickleness, and trust herself to
one of whose truth she will have assured herself." Then he took her
hand, and kneeling at her knee, he kissed it before she was powerful
enough to withdraw it. And so he left her, without another word, and
mounting on his vehicle, drove himself home without having exchanged
a single word at Holloway with any one save