my
heart that you were a woman whom I could love. Perhaps I should have
recognized more clearly as time went on that you were more to me even
then than I had a right to allow; yet I call heaven to witness that I
did not, by word or sign, do a wrong to him who has done such a cruel
wrong to you."

"Never by word or sign," echoed Selma solemnly. The bare suggestion that
Babcock had cause to complain of either of them seemed to her
preposterous. Yet she was saying to herself that it was easy to perceive
that he had loved her from the first.

"And since I love you with all my soul must I--should I in justice to
myself--to my own hopes of happiness, refrain from speaking merely
because you have so recently been divorced? I must speak--I am speaking.
It is too soon, I dare say, for you to be willing to think of marriage
again--but I offer you the love and protection of a husband. My means
are small, but I am able now to support a wife in decent comfort. Selma,
give me some hope. Tell me, that in time you may be willing to trust
yourself to my love. You wish to work--to distinguish yourself. Would I
be a hindrance to that? Indeed, you must know that I would do every
thing in my power to promote your desire to be of service to the world."

The time for her smile and her tears had come. He had argued his case
and her own, and it was clear to her mind that delay would be futile.
Since happiness was at hand, why not grasp it? As for her work, he need
not interfere with that. And, after all, now that she had tried it, was
she so sure that newspaper work--hack work, such as she was pursuing,
was what she wished? As a wife, re-established in the security of a
home, she could pick and choose her method of expression. Perhaps,
indeed, it would not be writing, except occasionally. Was not New York a
wide, fruitful field, for a reforming social influence? She saw herself
in her mind's eye a leader of movements and of progress. And that with a
man she loved--yes, adored even as he adored her.

So she turned to Littleton with her smile and in tears--the image of
bewitching but pathetic self-justification and surrender. Her mind was
made up; hence why procrastinate and coyly postpone the desirable, and
the inevitable? That was what she had the shrewdness to formulate in the
ecstasy of her transport; and so eloquent was the mute revelation of her
love that Littleton, diffident reverencer of the modesty of woman as he
was, without a word