low and tender. Herminia, sick at heart with that
long fierce struggle against overwhelming odds, could almost have
said YES to him. Her own nature prompted her; she was very, very
fond of him. But she paused for a second. Then she answered him
gravely.

"Harvey," she said, looking deep into his honest brown eyes, "as
we grow middle-aged, and find how impossible it must ever be to
achieve any good in a world like this, how sad a fate it is to be
born a civilized being in a barbaric community, I'm afraid moral
impulse half dies down within us. The passionate aim grows cold;
the ardent glow fades and flickers into apathy. I'm ashamed to
tell you the truth, it seems such weakness; yet as you ask me this,
I think I WILL tell you. Once upon a time, if you had made such a
proposal to me, if you had urged me to be false to my dearest
principles, to sin against the light, to deny the truth, I would
have flashed forth a NO upon you without one moment's hesitation.
And now, in my disillusioned middle age what do I feel? Do you
know, I almost feel tempted to give way to this Martinmas summer of
love, to stultify my past by unsaying and undoing everything. For
I love you, Harvey. If I were to give way now, as George Eliot
gave way, as almost every woman who once tried to live a free life
for her sisters' sake, has given way in the end, I should
counteract any little good my example has ever done or may ever do
in the world; and Harvey, strange as it sounds, I feel more than
half inclined to do it. But I WILL not, I WILL not; and I'll tell
you why. It's not so much principle that prevents me now. I admit
that freely. The torpor of middle age is creeping over my
conscience. It's simple regard for personal consistency, and for
Dolly's position. How can I go back upon the faith for which I
have martyred myself? How can I say to Dolly, 'I wouldn't marry
your father in my youth, for honor's sake; but I have consented in
middle life to sell my sisters' cause for a man I love, and for the
consideration of society; to rehabilitate myself too late with a
world I despise by becoming one man's slave, as I swore I never
would be.' No, no, dear Harvey; I can't do that. Some sense of
personal continuity restrains me still. It is the Nemesis of our
youth; we can't go back in our later life on the holier and purer
ideals of our girlhood."

"Then you say no definitely?" Harvey Kynaston asked.

Herminia's voice quivered. "I