vation of the race upon the strength of
loving.

All this she knew and more, knew as by instinct as her love flamed
conscious in her.

She knew that there was one thing to which love like hers could not link
itself and that was to dishonour, not the false dishonour of
conventionalism but the real dishonour of proving untrue to herself. She
know that when she ceased to respect herself, when she shrank from
herself, then she would shrink before him whom she loved and who loved
her. She knew that she could better bear to lose him, to go lonely and
solitary along the future years, than shame that self-consciousness which
ever she had held sacred but which was doubly sacred now he loved her.

How she loved him! For his soul, for his body, for his brain, for his
rough tenderness, for his fiery tongue! She loved his broad shoulders and
his broad mind. She loved his hearty laugh and his hearty hand-grip and
his homely speech and his red-hot enthusiasm. She loved him because she
felt that he dared and because she felt that he loved her. She loved him
because she had learned to see in him her ideal. She loved him because he
was in danger for the Cause and because he was going from her and because
she had loved him for years had she but known. She loved him for a
thousand things. And yet! Something held her back. It only needed a word
but the word did not come. It was on her lips a dozen times, that one
word "Ned!" which meant all words, and she did not say it.

They stood there side by side, motionless, silent, waiting, Ned suffering
anguish unspeakable, Nellie plunged in that great joy which comes so
seldom that some say it only comes to herald deeper sadness. To him the
glorious scene around spoke nothing, he hardly saw it; to her it was
enchanted with a strange enchantment, never had it seemed so, all the
times she had seen it. How beautiful life was! How sweet to exist! How
glad the world!

"Nellie!" said Ned, at last, humbly, penitently, hopelessly. "I'm not a
good man. I haven't been just what you think I've been." He stopped, then
added, slowly and desperately as if on an afterthought: "If--your own
heart--won't plead--for--me--it's not a bit of use my saying
anything."

When one speaks as one feels one generally speaks to the point and this
sudden despairing cry of Ned's was a better plea than any he could by
long thinking have constructed. Wonderful are the intricacies of a man's
mind, but still more intricate the