of it--you are exactly the one to
learn how much there can be in life besides its luxuries. Since my
illness, too, Aurora, let me confide to you, there have been in me
reawakenings.... I have felt the beginning--I am speaking with reference
to my work,--I have felt intimations--No, it is too difficult to express
without seeming to boast, which is horribly unlucky. In short, I have
felt that I might do the turn still of forcing a careless generation to
pay attention."

"Oh, Gerald, how nice it is to have you say that!" she warmly rejoiced.
"I'm so glad to hear it!"

"Now tell me why it is you won't marry me. Stop, dear. Don't say because
you are not in love with me. I have difficulty in seeing how any one in
her right senses could be in love with me. It would be enough, dear,
that you should be to me as you were during those happy, happy days when
I was so beastly ill. You are so generous, it would be merely fulfilling
your nature. And I, upon my word, dear, would try to deserve it. I would
give you reason to be kind. I am not without scraps of honor--wholly; I
would do my best to make you happy."

"No,"--she shook her head decidedly,--"no, Gerry," she added, to take
the sharp edge off her refusal, "no, Gerry; Rory won't."

"You have only to lose by it, that is obvious, and I to gain, and
nothing could equal the indecency of insistence on my part; but I feel
that I am going to persist to the point of persecution. You are fond of
me, you know. I only dare to say you are fond of me because you have
said it yourself more than once. And you are always sincere, and I
wouldn't be likely to forget. Now, if you are fond of me,--very, very
fond, you have said repeatedly,--why do you refuse? I wouldn't be a bore
of a husband, I promise. I would leave you a great deal of liberty."

"No, Geraldino; no."

"You needn't tell me there's somebody else. I don't believe it. Though
you feel only fondness for me, I know that you are not in love with
anybody else. When one is in love, there is no room in life for such
warm and dear friendship as you have frankly shown me. It's that, after
all, which has given me courage."

"No, no; there's nobody else."

"Well, then, why can't you? Why won't you?"

"I--" She hesitated, as if to think. There was a silence. Then she asked
slowly, like one who finds some difficulty in laying her tongue on the
right words: "Do you remember all those things you said that evening in
the garden, the night