nd
living, and making me cold, and dumb, and stiff, like _that_?"

"Yes, Pauline, if it had been to save us both from sin."

"You don't know what love is, if you say that."

"I know what sin is, better than you do, maybe. Listen, Pauline. I've
loved you ever since I saw you; men don't often love better than I have
loved you; but I'd rather drag you, to-night, to that black river there,
and hold you down with my own hands till the breath left your body, than
see you turn into a sinful woman, and lead the life of shame you tell me
you had it in your heart to lead, to-day."

"Is it so very awful?" I whispered with a shiver, my own emotion stilled
before his. "I only loved him!"

"Forget you ever did," he said, rising, and pacing up and down the room.

I put my hands before my face, and felt as if I were alone in the world
with sin. If this unspoken, passionate, sweet thought, that I had
harbored, were so full of danger as to force God to blast me with such
punishment, as to drive this tender, generous, loving man to wish me
dead, what must be the blackness of the sin from which I had been saved,
if I were saved? If there were, indeed, anything but shocks of woe and
punishment, and deadly despair and darkness, in this strange world in
which I found myself. There was a silence. I rose to my feet. I don't
know what I meant to do or where to go; my only impulse was to hide
myself from the eyes of my companion, and to go away from him, as I had
hidden myself from all others, since I was smitten with this
chastisement.

"Forgive me, Pauline," he said, coming to my side. "It is the second
time I have been harsh with you this dreadful day. This is what comes of
selfishness. I hope you will forget what I have said."

I still turned to go away, feeling afraid of him and ashamed before him.
He put out his hand to stop me.

"Pauline, remember, I have been sorely tried. I would do anything to
comfort you. I haven't another wish in my heart but to be of use
to you."

"Oh, Richard," I cried, bursting into tears afresh, and hiding my eyes,
"if you give me up and drive me away from you, I am all alone. There
isn't another human being that I love or that cares for me. Dear
Richard, do be good to me; do be sorry for me."

"I am sorry for you, Pauline; you know that."

"And you will take care of me?" I cried, stretching out my arms toward
him, with a sudden overwhelming sense of my loneliness and destitution.

"Yes, Pauline, t