want to marry."

"I, too, have thought of that," she said.

"You don't consider that I am debarred from marriage?"

"Oh, no, no!" Katherine cried, a little sob in her voice.

He looked at her steadily, with those profoundly desolate eyes.

"It would not be wrong? It would not be otherwise than honourable?" he
asked.

If doubts arose within Katherine of the answer to that question, she
crushed them down passionately.

"No, my dearest, no," she declared. "It would not be wrong--it could
not, could not be so--if she loved you, and you loved whomsoever you
married."

"But I'm not in love--at least not in love with any person who can
become my wife. Yet that does not seem to me to matter very much. I
should be faithful, no fear, to any one who was good enough to marry
me. Enough of love would come, if only out of gratitude, towards the
woman who would accept me as--as I am--and forgive that--that which
cannot be helped."

Again trembling shook Katherine. So terribly much seemed to her at
stake just then! Silently she implored wisdom and clear-seeing might be
accorded her. She leaned a little forward, and taking his left hand
held it closely in both hers.

"Dearest, that is not all. Tell me all," she said, "or I cannot quite
follow your thought."

Richard flung his body sideways across the bed, and kissed her hands as
they held his. The hot colour rushed over his face and neck, up to the
roots of his close-cropped, curly hair. He spoke, lying thus upon his
chest, his face half buried in the sheet.

"I want to marry because--because I want a child--I want a son," he
said.

No words came to Katherine just then. But she disengaged one hand and
laid it upon the dear brown head, and waited in silence until the
violence of the young man's emotion had spent itself, until the broad,
muscular shoulders had ceased to heave and the strong, young hands to
grasp her wrist. Suddenly Richard recovered himself, sat up, rubbing
his hands across his eyes, laughing, but with a queer catch in his
voice.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I'm a fool, an awful fool. Hang Morabita
and her voice and the golden houses of the gods, and beastly, showy
omnipotence to which her voice carries one away! To talk
sense--mother--just brutal common sense. My fate is fixed, you know.
There's no earthly use in wriggling. I am condemned to live a cow's
life and die a cow's death. The pride of life may call, but I can't
answer. The great prizes a