ou ask me what you might and what
you might not do?"

Her companion raised the moustache with a caressing movement from his
lip and smiled. It was not a question that stood in need of any answer.

"Why do you wish to enter on this semblance of marriage?"

"Because there is only one point on which I have a conscience. I have
told you so."

"Then why not marry me?"

"Because if once you have me you would hold me fast. I shall never be
free again." She drew a long, low breath.

"What have you done with the ring I gave you?" he said.

"Sometimes I wear it; then I take it off and wish to throw it into the
fire; the next day I put it on again, and sometimes I kiss it."

"So you do love me a little?"

"If you were not something more to me than any other man in the world,
do you think--" She paused. "I love you when I see you; but when you are
away from me I hate you."

"Then I fear I must be singularly invisible at the present moment," he
said. "Possibly if you were to look less fixedly into the fire you might
perceive me."

He moved his chair slightly, so as to come between her and the
firelight. She raised her eyes to his face.

"If you do love me," he asked her, "why will you not marry me?"

"Because, if I had been married to you for a year I should have come to
my senses and seen that your hands and your voice are like the hands and
the voice of any other man. I cannot quite see that now. But it is all
madness. You call into activity one part of my nature; there is a higher
part that you know nothing of, that you never touch. If I married
you, afterward it would arise and assert itself, and I should hate you
always, as I do now sometimes."

"I like you when you grow metaphysical and analytical," he said, leaning
his face upon his hand. "Go a little further in your analysis; say, 'I
love you with the right ventricle of my heart, but not the left, and
with the left auricle of my heart, but not the right; and, this being
the case, my affection for you is not of a duly elevated, intellectual
and spiritual nature.' I like you when you get philosophical."

She looked quietly at him; he was trying to turn her own weapons against
her.

"You are acting foolishly, Lyndall," he said, suddenly changing his
manner, and speaking earnestly, "most foolishly. You are acting like a
little child; I am surprised at you. It is all very well to have ideals
and theories; but you know as well as any one can that they must not