d fought down he thought bitterly:

"She has changed me more than I have changed her. It is always so."

She moved a little, her pose, with instinctive dramatic sense, changing
with her changing mood.

"Do not think I don't understand you," she said quietly.

"What do you understand?"

"It hurts you because I wish to return."

"That is not so, Madeleine," he said abruptly. "You know what big things
I want you to do."

"I know--only you would like me to say the contrary--to protest that I
would give it all up--be content to be with you alone."

"No, not that," he said grudgingly, "and yet, this last night--here--I
should like to hear you say the contrary."

She laughed a low laugh and caught his hand a little tighter.

"That displeases you?"

"No, no, of course not!" Presently she added with an effort:

"There is so much that we must say to each other and we have not the
courage."

"True, all summer we have never talked of what must come after."

"I want you to understand why I go back to it all, why I wish every year
to be separated from you--yes, exactly, from you," she added, as his
fingers contracted with an involuntary movement. "Ben, what has come to
me I never expected would come. I love, but neither that word nor any
other word can express how absolutely I have become yours. When I told
you my life, you did not wonder how difficult it was for me to believe
that such a thing could be possible. But you convinced me, and what has
come to me has come as a miracle. I adore you. All my life has been
lived just for this great love; ah yes, that's what I believe, what I
feel." She leaned swiftly to him and allowed him to catch her to him in
his strong arms. Then slowly disengaging herself, she continued, "You
are a little hurt because I do not cry out what you would not accept,
because I do not say that I would give up everything if you asked it."

"It is only to _hear_ it," he said impulsively.

"But I have often wished it myself," she said slowly. "There's not a day
that I have not wished it--to give up everything and stay by you. Do you
know why? From the longing that's in me now, the first unselfish
longing I have ever had--to sacrifice myself for you in some way,
somehow. It is more than a hunger, it is a need of the soul--of my love
itself. It comes over me sometimes as tears come to my eyes when you are
away, and I say to myself, 'I love him,' and yet, Ben, I shall not, I
shall never give up my