-the only thing that gave me the right
to come against your will, if it _was_ against it. I came to ask you to
marry me. Will you?"

She now turned and looked fully at him, though he was aware of being a
mere blur in her near-sighted vision.

"Do you mean to ask it now?"

"Yes."

"And have you wished to ask it ever since you first saw me?"

He tried to say that he had, but he could not; he could only say, "I
wish to ask it now more than ever."

She shook her head slowly. "I'm not sure how you want me to answer you."

"Not sure?"

"No. I'm afraid I might disappoint you again."

He could not make out whether she was laughing at him. He sat, not
knowing what to say, and he blurted out, "Do you mean that you won't?"

"I shouldn't want you to make another mistake."

"I don't know what you"--he was going to say "mean," but he
substituted--"wish. If you wish for more time, I can wait as long as you
choose."

"No, I might wish for time, if there was anything more. But if there's
nothing else you have to tell me--then, no, I cannot marry you."

Langbourne rose, feeling justly punished, somehow, but bewildered as
much as humbled, and stood stupidly unable to go. "I don't know what you
could expect me to say after you've refused me--"

"Oh, I don't expect anything."

"But there _is_ something I should like to tell you. I know that I
behaved that night as if--as if I hadn't come to ask you--what I have; I
don't blame you for not trusting me now. But it is no use to tell you
what I intended if it is all over."

He looked down into his hat, and she said in a low voice, "I think I
ought to know. Won't you--sit down?"

He sat down again. "Then I will tell you at the risk of--But there's
nothing left to lose! You know how it is, when we think about a person
or a place before we've seen them: we make some sort of picture of them,
and expect them to be like it. I don't know how to say it; you do look
more like what I thought than you did at first. I suppose I must seem a
fool to say it; but I thought you were tall, and that you
were--well!--rather masterful--"

"Like Juliet Bingham?" she suggested, with a gleam in the eye next him.

"Yes, like Juliet Bingham. It was your voice made me think--it was your
voice that first made me want to see you, that made me write to you, in
the beginning. I heard you talking that night in the hotel, where you
left that circular; you were in the room next to mine; and I wanted to
c