ople with less determination and more patience than
you. You are not very patient by nature, Elinor."

"I never said I was."

"And though no one would give up more generously, as a voluntary matter,
you could not bear being made a nonentity of, or put in a secondary
place."

"I should not like it, I suppose."

"You would give everything, flinging it away; but to have all your
sacrifices taken for granted, your tastes made of no account----"

There was no doubt now that she had grown pale. "May I ask what all
these investigations into my character mean? I never was so anatomized
before."

"It was only to say that you are not a good subject for this kind of
experiment, Elinor. I don't see you putting up with things, making the
best of everything, submitting to have your sense of right and wrong
outraged perhaps. Some women would not be much disturbed by that. They
would put off the responsibility and feel it their duty to accept
whatever was put before them. But you--it would be a different matter
with you."

"I should hope so, if I was ever exposed to such dangers. But now may
I know what you are driving at, John, for you have some meaning in what
you say!"

He took her hand and drew it through his arm. He was in more moved than
he wished to show. "Only this, Elinor,"--he said.

"Oh, John, will you never call me Nelly any more?"

"Only this, Nelly, my little Nelly, never mine again--and that never was
mine, except in my silly thought. Only this: that if you have the least
doubt, the smallest flutter of an uncertainty, just enough to make you
hold your breath for a moment, oh, my dear girl, stop! Don't go on with
it; pause until you can make sure."

"John!" she forced her arm from his with an indignant movement. "Oh, how
do you dare to say it?" she said. "Doubt of Mr. Compton! Uncertainty
about Phil!" She laughed out, and the echo seemed to ring into all the
recesses of the trees. "I would be much more ready to doubt myself," she
said.

"Doubt yourself; that is what I mean. Think if you are not deceiving
yourself. I don't think you are so very sure as you believe you are,
Nelly. You don't feel so certain----"

"Do you know that you are insulting me, John? You say as much as that I
am a fool carried away by a momentary enthusiasm, with no real love, no
true feeling in me, tempted, perhaps, as Mrs. Hudson thinks, by the
Honourable!" Her lip quivered, and the fading colour came back in a rush
to her face. "