passion, transformed it into a feeling
hitherto unexperienced and unimagined. He hovered over her, pitifully,
his hands feeling for her, yet not daring to touch her.

"Can't you see that I love you?" he cried, "that I'm ready to marry
you now, to-night. You must love me, I won't believe that you don't
after--after all we have been to each other."

But even then she could not believe. Something in her, made hard by the
intensity of her suffering, refused to melt. And her head was throbbing,
and she scarcely heard him.

"I can't stay any longer," she said, getting to her feet. "I can't bear
it."

"Janet, I swear I'll care for you as no woman was ever cared for. For
God's sake listen to me, give me a chance, forgive me!" He seized her
arm; she struggled, gently but persistently, to free herself from his
hold.

"Let me go, please." All the passionate anger had gone out of her,
and she spoke in a monotone, as one under hypnosis, dominated by a
resolution which, for the present at least, he was powerless to shake.

"But to-morrow?" he pleaded. "You'll let me see you to-morrow, when
you've had time to think it over, when you realize that I love you
and want you, that I haven't meant to be cruel--that you've misjudged
me--thought I was a different kind of a man. I don't blame you for that,
I guess something happened to make you believe it. I've got enemies. For
the sake of the child, Janet, if for nothing else, you'll come back to
me! You're--you're tired tonight, you're not yourself. I don't wonder,
after all you've been through. If you'd only come to me before! God
knows what I've suffered, too!"

"Let me go, please," she repeated, and this time, despairingly, he
obeyed her, a conviction of her incommunicability overwhelming him.
He turned and, fumbling with the key, unlocked the door and opened it.
"I'll see you to-morrow," he faltered once more, and watched her as
she went through the darkened outer room until she gained the lighted
hallway beyond and disappeared. Her footsteps died away into silence.
He was trembling. For several minutes he stood where she had left him,
tortured by a sense of his inability to act, to cope with this, the
great crisis of his life, when suddenly the real significance of that
strange last look in her eyes was borne home to him. And he had allowed
her to go out into the streets alone! Seizing his hat and coat, he
fairly ran out of the office and down the stairs and across the bridge.