nd with suggestions, imposed upon her a
conception of her situation that now dominated all her thoughts.

"Dear Stephen," reiterated Mary, "I love you. I do, clearly, definitely,
deliberately love you. Haven't I told you that? Haven't I made that
plain to you?"

"But you are going to marry Justin!"

"Stephen dear, can I possibly marry you? Can I?"

"Why not? Why not make the adventure of life with me? Dare!"

She looked down on me. She was sitting upon a parapet of the brickwork
and I was below her. She seemed to be weighing possibilities.

"Why not?" I cried. "Even now. Why not run away with me, throw our two
lives together? Do as lovers have dared to do since the beginning of
things! Let us go somewhere together----"

"But Stephen," she asked softly, "_where_?"

"Anywhere!"

She spoke as an elder might do to a child. "No! tell me where--exactly.
Where would it be? Where should we go? How should we live? Tell me. Make
me see it, Stephen."

"You are too cruel to me, Mary," I said. "How can I--on the spur of the
moment--arrange----?"

"But dear, suppose it was somewhere very grimy and narrow!
Something--like some of those back streets I came through to get here.
Suppose it was some dreadful place. And you had no money. And we were
both worried and miserable. One gets ill in such places. If I loved you,
Stephen--I mean if you and I--if you and I were to be together, I should
want it to be in sunshine, I should want it to be among beautiful
forests and mountains. Somewhere very beautiful...."

"Why not?"

"Because--to-day I know. There are no such places in the world for us.
Stephen, they are dreams."

"For three years now," I said, "I have dreamed such dreams.

"Oh!" I cried out, stung by my own words, "but this is cowardice! Why
should we submit to this old world! Why should we give up--things you
have dreamed as well as I! You said once--to hear my voice--calling in
the morning.... Let us take each other, Mary, now. _Now!_ Let us take
each other, and"--I still remember my impotent phrase--"afterwards count
the cost!"

"If I were a queen," said Mary. "But you see I am not a queen." ...

So we talked in fragments and snatches of argument, and all she said
made me see more clearly the large hopelessness of my desire. "At
least," I urged, "do not marry Justin now. Give me a chance. Give me
three years, Mary, three short years, to work, to do something!"

She knew so clearly now the quality of her own