mbrace, "you will be persuaded by me? You will be mine now?"

Gradually,--very gently,--she contrived to extricate herself. There
must be no more of it, or his passion would become too strong for
her. "Sit down, dearest," she said. "You flurry me by all this. It is
not good that I should be flurried."

"I will be quiet, tame, motionless, if you will only say the one word
to me. Make me understand that we are not to be parted, and I will
ask for nothing else."

"Parted! No, I do not think that we shall be parted."

"Say that the day shall come when we may really be joined together;
when--"

"No, dear; no; I cannot say that. I cannot alter anything that I have
said before. I cannot make things other than they are. Here we are,
we two, loving each other with all our hearts, and yet it may not be.
My dear, dear lord!" She had never even yet learned another name for
him than this. "Sometimes I ask myself whether it has been my fault."
She was now sitting, and he was standing over her, but still holding
her by the hand.

"There has been no fault. Why should either have been in fault?"

"When there is so great a misfortune there must generally have
been a fault. But I do not think there has been any here. Do not
misunderstand me, dear. The misfortune is not with me. I do not know
that the Lord could have sent me a greater blessing than to have
been loved by you,--were it not that your trouble, your grief, your
complainings rob me of my joy."

"Then do not rob me," he said.

"Out of two evils you must choose the least. You have heard of that,
have you not?"

"There need be no evil;--no such evil as this." Then he dropped her
hand, and stood apart from her while he listened to her, or else
walked up and down the room, throwing at her now and again a quick
angry word, as she went on striving to make clear to him the ideas as
they came to her mind.

"I do not know how I could have done otherwise," she said, "when
you would make it so certain to me that you loved me. I suppose it
might have been possible for me to go away, and not to say a word in
answer."

"That is nonsense,--sheer nonsense," he said.

"I could not tell you an untruth. I tried it once, but the words
would not come at my bidding. Had I not spoken them, you would read
the truth in my eyes. What then could I have done? And yet there was
not a moment in which I have not known that it must be as it is."

"It need not be; it need not be. It should not