_proved_ myself to my Guides--then the voices will come to me. Martha
has repeated it to Aunt Paula whenever I have gone away from home. She
repeated it before I came up here--"

"They had cause to repeat it," he took her up fiercely; "cause to
repeat it!"

"I--I'm afraid so. But how should I know? I looked at you--and it
seemed right, everlastingly right, that I should know you. And then I
did--so suddenly and easily that it made me shudder afterwards for fear
the test had come--the agony which I have been afraid to face. Ah, it's
bold saying this!" She drooped forward, and her porcelain skin turned
to rose.

Blake sat breathless, dumb. Never had she seemed so far away from him
as then; never had she seemed so desirable. He struggled with his
voice, but no word came; and it was she who spoke first.

"Now I know--it is the agony!"

At this admission, all the love and all the irritation in him came up
together into a force which drove him on. They were alone; none other
looked; but had all the world been looking, he might have done what he
did. He rose to his feet, he dropped both his hands on her shoulders,
he devoured her sapphirine eyes with his eyes, and his voice was steel
as he spoke:

"You love me. You have always loved me. In spite of everything, you
will marry me! You will say it before you are done with me!"

He stopped suddenly, for her eyelids were drooping. Had he not been a
physician, he would have said that she was going to faint. But her
color did not change. And suddenly she was speaking in a low tone which
mocked his, but with no expression nor intonations:

"I love you. I have always loved you. In spite of everything, I shall
marry you."

He dropped his hands from her shoulders with a bewildered impulse to
seize her in his arms; then the publicity of the place came to him, and
he drew his hands back. On that motion, her eyes opened and she flashed
a little away from him.

"What did I say?" she exclaimed; "and why--oh, don't touch me--don't
come near--can't you see it makes it harder for me to renounce?"

"But you said--"

"I said before you touched me--ah, don't touch me again--that I
_should_ make it hard--the harder I make it, the more I shall grow--but
I can't bear so much!" She had risen, was moving away.

"Let's walk," he said shortly; and then, "Even if you put me aside,
won't you keep me in your life?"

"The Guides will tell me," she answered simply.

"But I may see you--cal