ily catch up my hat, which has fallen to the ground, and
without a word or look of farewell, begin to run fast along the homeward
path. Before I have gone ten yards he has overtaken me. His face is
distorted by passion out of all its beauty.

"Nancy," he says, in a voice rendered almost unrecognizable by extreme
agitation, walking quickly alongside of me, "we are not going to part
like this!"

"Do not call me Nancy!" cry I, indignantly; "it makes me _sick_!"

"What does it matter what I call you?" he cries, impatiently; "of what
consequence is such a trifle? I will call you by what name you please,
but for this once you _must_ listen to me. I know, as well as you do,
that it is my last chance!"

"_That_ it is!" put in I, viciously.

The path is beginning to rise. After mounting the slope, we shall soon
be out of the wood, and in the peopled open again.

"How can I help it, if I have gone mad?" he cries violently, evidently
driven to desperation by the shortness of the time before him.

"Mad!" echo I, scornfully, "not a bit of it! you are as sane as I am!"

All this time we are posting along in mad haste. Thank God! the
high-road is in sight, the cheerful, populous, light high-road. The
trees grow thinner, and the path broadens. Even from here, we can
plainly see the carts and carters. He stops, and making me stop, too,
snatches both my hands.

"Nancy!" he says, harshly, stooping over me, while his eyes flame with a
haggard light. "Yes, I _will_ call you so this once--to me now you _are_
Nancy! I will _not_ call you by _his_ name! Is it _possible_? You may
say that it is my egotism; but, at a moment like this, what is the use
of shamming--of polite pretense? Never, _never_ before in all my life
have I given love without receiving it, and I _cannot_ believe"--(with
an accent of passionate entreaty)--"that I do now! Feeling for you as I
do, do you feel absolutely _nothing_ for me?"

"_Feel_!" cry I, driven out of all moderation by disgust and
exasperation. "Would you like to know how I feel? I feel _as if a slug
had crawled over me_!"

His face contracts, his eyes darken with a raging pain. He _throws_ my
hands--the hands a moment ago so jealously clasped--away from him.

"Thank you!" he says, after a pause, in a stiff voice of constraint. "I
am satisfied!"

"And a very good thing too!" say I, sturdily, still at boiling-point,
and diminishing with quick steps the small space still intervening
between me and