her
feet, and, putting forcibly aside the hands that would have held her
back, walked unsteadily towards the nearest pillar, and leaned against
it, trembling violently.

"Do not tempt me," she said, hoarsely. "I cannot bear it."

He came and stood beside her.

"I do not tempt you," he said. "I want to save you and myself from a
great calamity before it is too late."

"It is too late already."

"No," said Charles, in a low voice of intense determination. "It is
not--yet. It will be soon. It is still possible to go back. You are not
married to him, and it is no longer right that you should marry him. You
must give him up. There is no other way."

"Yes," said Ruth, with vehemence. "There is another way. You have made
me forget it; but before you came I saw it clearly. I can't think it out
as I did then; but I know it is there. There is another way"--and her
voice faltered--"to do what is right, and let everything else go."

Charles saw for the first time, with a sudden frightful contraction of
the heart, that her will was as strong as his own. He had staked
everything on one desperate appeal to her feelings; he had carried the
outworks, and now another adversary--her conscience--rose up between him
and her.

"A marriage without love is a sin," he said, quietly. "If you had lived
in the world as long as I have, and had seen what marriage without love
means, and what it generally comes to in the end, you would know that I
am speaking the truth. You have no right to marry Dare if you care for
me. Hesitate, and it will be too late! Break off your engagement now. Do
you suppose," with sudden fire, "that we shall cease to love each other;
that I shall be able to cease to love you for the rest of my life
because you are Dare's wife? What is done can't be undone. Our love for
each other can't. It is no good shutting your eyes to that. Look the
facts in the face, and don't deceive yourself into thinking that the
most difficult course is necessarily the right one."

He turned from her, and sat down on the bench again, his chin in his
hands, his haggard eyes fastened on her face. He had said his last word,
and she felt that when she spoke it would be her last word too. Neither
could bear much more.

"All you say sounds right, _at first_," she said, after a long silence,
and as she spoke Charles's hands dropped from his face and clinched
themselves together; "but I cannot go by what any one thinks unless I
think so mysel