accept you it will be because I wish to perpetuate that
faith and peace, and because I believe that our joint lives will realize
worthy accomplishment." Selma looked into space with her wrapt gaze,
apparently engaged in an intense mental struggle.

"And you will accept? You do feel that you can return my love? I cannot
tell you how greatly I am stirred and stimulated by what you have said.
It makes me feel that I could never be happy without you." Lyons put
into this speech all his solemnity and all his emotional beneficence of
temperament. He was genuinely moved. His first marriage had been a love
match. His wife--a mere girl--had died within a year; so soon that the
memory of her was a tender but hazy sentiment rather than a formulated
impression of character. By virtue of this memory he had approached
marriage again as one seeking a companion for his fireside, and a
comely, sensible woman to preside over his establishment and promote his
social status, rather than one expecting to be possessed by or to
inspire a dominant passion. Yet he, too, regarded himself distinctly as
an idealist, and he had lent a greedy ear to Selma's suggestion that
mature mutual sympathy and comradeship in establishing convictions and
religious aims were the source of a nobler type of love than that
associated with early matrimony. It increased his admiration for her,
and gave to his courtship, the touch of idealism which--partly owing to
his own modesty as a man no longer in the flush of youth--it had lacked.
He nervously stroked his beard with his thick hand, and gave himself up
to the spell of this vision of blessedness while he eagerly watched
Selma's face and waited for her answer. To combine moral purpose and
love in a pervasive alliance appealed to him magnetically as a religious
man.

Selma, as she faced Lyons, was conscious necessarily of the contrast
between him and her late husband. But she was attuned to regard his
coarser physical fibre as masculine vigor and a protest against
aristocratic delicacy, and to derive comfort and exaltation from it.

"Mr. Lyons," she said, "I will tell you frankly that the circumstances
of married life have hitherto hampered the expression of that which is
in me, and confined the scope of my individuality within narrow and
uncongenial limits. I am not complaining; I have no intention to rake up
the past; but it is proper you should know that I believe myself capable
of larger undertakings than hav