is so great, and sweet, and
true, and generous? Not monopolizing, of course, for that would be
wrong and selfish; but making you my own more than any other
woman's. And I answered my own heart, Yes, yes, I shall do right
to accept him, if he asks me; for I love him, that is enough. The
thrill within me tells me so. Nature put that thrill in our souls
to cry out to us with a clear voice when we had met the soul she
then and there intended for us."

Alan's face flushed like her own. "Then you love me," he cried,
all on fire. "And you deign to tell me so; Oh, Herminia, how sweet
you are. What have I done to deserve it?"

He folded her in his arms. Her bosom throbbed on his. Their lips
met for a second. Herminia took his kiss with sweet submission,
and made no faint pretence of fighting against it. Her heart was
full. She quickened to the finger-tips.

There was silence for a minute or two,--the silence when soul
speaks direct to soul through the vehicle of touch, the
mother-tongue of the affections. Then Alan leaned back once more,
and hanging over her in a rapture murmured in soft low tones, "So
Herminia, you will be mine! You say beforehand you will take me."

"Not WILL be yours," Herminia corrected in that silvery voice of
hers. "AM yours already, Alan. I somehow feel as if I had always
been yours. I am yours this moment. You may do what you would
with me."

She said it so simply, so purely, so naturally, with all the
supreme faith of the good woman, enamoured, who can yield herself
up without blame to the man who loves her, that it hardly even
occurred to Alan's mind to wonder at her self-surrender. Yet he
drew back all the same in a sudden little crisis of doubt and
uncertainty. He scarcely realized what she meant. "Then,
dearest," he cried tentatively, "how soon may we be married?"

At sound of those unexpected words from such lips as his, a flush
of shame and horror overspread Herminia's cheek. "Never!" she
cried firmly, drawing away. "Oh, Alan, what can you mean by it?
Don't tell me, after all I've tried to make you feel and
understand, you thought I could possibly consent to MARRY you?"

The man gazed at her in surprise. Though he was prepared for much,
he was scarcely prepared for such devotion to principle. "Oh,
Herminia," he cried, "you can't mean it. You can't have thought of
what it entails. Surely, surely, you won't carry your ideas of
freedom to such an extreme, such a