ou keep me. I'd
have to have work, you see, or I'd lose my self-respect--it's all I've
got--I'd kill myself." She spoke as calmly as though she were reviewing
the situation objectively. "And then, I've thought that you might come to
believe you really wanted to marry me--you wouldn't realize what you were
doing, or what might happen if we were married. I've tried to tell you
that, too, only you didn't seem to understand what I was saying. My
father's only a gatekeeper, we're poor--poorer than some of the
operatives in the mill, and the people you know here in Hampton wouldn't
understand. Perhaps you think you wouldn't care, but--" she spoke with
more effort, "there are your children. When I've thought of them, it all
seems impossible. I'd make you unhappy--I couldn't bear it, I wouldn't
stay with you. You see, I ought to have gone away long ago."

Believing, as he did, that marriage was the goal of all women, even of
the best, the immediate capitulation he had expected would have made
matters far less difficult. But these scruples of hers, so startlingly
his own, her disquieting insight into his entire mental process had a
momentary checking effect, summoned up the vague presage of a future that
might become extremely troublesome and complicated. His very reluctance
to discuss with her the problem she had raised warned him that he had
been swept into deep waters. On the other hand, her splendid resistance
appealed to him, enhanced her value. And accustomed as he had been to a
lifelong self-gratification, the thought of being balked in this supreme
desire was not to be borne. Such were the shades of his feeling as he
listened to her.

"That's nonsense!" he exclaimed, when she had finished. "You're a lady
--I know all about your family, I remember hearing about it when your
father came here--it's as good as any in New England. What do you suppose
I care, Janet? We love each other--I've got to have you. We'll be married
in the spring, when the rush is over."

He drew her to him once more, and suddenly, in the ardour of that
embrace, he felt her tenseness suddenly relax--as though, against her
will--and her passion, as she gave her lips, vied with his own. Her lithe
body trembled convulsively, her cheeks were wet as she clung to him and
hid her face in his shoulder. His sensations in the presence of this
thing he had summoned up in her were incomprehensible, surpassing any he
had ever known. It was no longer a woman he he