ecause you worked off on the poor devil all the
morbid and ultra-romantic tendencies that were spoiling your life. But
let it go at that. It was no more love than my first Byronic madness for
one of my mother's friends when I was sixteen--"

"You were thirty when you were in love with Mrs. Kaye. And she was not
even your second--nor your tenth, no doubt."

"Quite right. I do not understand and shall waste no time on the effort.
All men run pretty much the same gamut. That attack was the most
commonplace sort of passion, no madness in it, no idealization, no sense
of mating--"

"And how, may I ask, do you expect to know when you really do fall in
love--"

"I'll know, all right. I wish you would put up your hair. You look
uncanny, not like a woman at all. You have too many sides. I like you
when you are human and normal."

"If you think my hair in its proper place will accomplish that
result--my hair-pins are up-stairs on my dressing-table--"

He disappeared instantly. When he returned she was standing and coiling
her hair about her head. Her sleeves were loose and the attitude bared
her arms. As Gwynne handed her the pins, one by one, he stared,
fascinated; but when she had finished and shaken down her sleeves,
returning his stare with two polar stars, he turned his back suddenly
and resumed his tramp of the room.

"I have changed my mind," he said, abruptly. "I had intended to marry
you on any terms, merely because you suited my critical taste. But I
believe that if I married you in that way I should beat you or kill
you--or you would kill me. You are capable of anything. Love would
square matters with us--nothing else."

"Then is the engagement broken?" asked Isabel, placidly. She did not sit
down, but stood with a foot on the fender.

He relieved his feelings by kicking a stool across the room, then came
and stood in front of her.

"Could you love me?" he demanded.

"I am not the village prophet."

"Have you made up your mind you will not marry me?"

"Oh yes--that."

"Because you couldn't love me, or because you are determined not to
marry?"

"I won't feel and suffer and have my life torn to tatters when I can
keep it whole! I had rather marry you without love, if I believed myself
indispensable to your success in life."

"Much you know about it. I won't have you on any such terms."

"You are in no imminent danger. Heavens, what a wind! You must stay here
to-night. If the spare room is too cold