woman's love.'

Sidwell dropped her eyes in confusion.

'I can't analyse your character--I only know'----

She became silent.

'To myself,' pursued Godwin, with the modulated, moving voice which
always expressed his genuine feeling, 'I seem anything but lovable. I
don't underrate my powers--rather the opposite, no doubt; but what I
always seem to lack is the gift of pleasing--moral grace. My strongest
emotions seem to be absorbed in revolt; for once that I feel tenderly,
I have a hundred fierce, resentful, tempestuous moods. To be suave and
smiling in common intercourse costs me an effort. I have to act the
part, and this habit makes me sceptical, whenever I am really prompted
to gentleness. I criticise myself ceaselessly; expose without mercy all
those characteristics which another man would keep out of sight. Yes,
and for this very reason, just because I think myself unlovable--the
gift of love means far more to me than to other men. If you could
conceive the passion of gratitude which possessed me for hours after I
left you the other day! You cannot!'

Sidwell regarded him fixedly.

'In comparison with this sincerity, what becomes of the pretence you
blame in me? If you knew how paltry it seems--that accusation of
dishonesty! I believed the world round, and pretended to believe it
flat: that's what it amounts to! Are you, on such an account as that,
to consider worthless the devotion which has grown in me month by
month? You--I was persuaded--thought the world flat, and couldn't think
kindly of any man who held the other hypothesis. Very well; why not
concede the trifle, and so at least give myself a chance? I did
so--that was all.'

In vain her conscience strove to assert itself. She was under the spell
of a nature infinitely stronger than hers; she saw and felt as Godwin
did.

'You think, Sidwell, that I stand in need of forgiveness. Then be great
enough to forgive me, wholly--once and for all. Let your love be
strengthened by the trial it has passed through. That will mean that my
whole life is yours, directed by the ever-present thought of your
beauty, face and soul. Then there _will_ be good in me, thanks to you.
I shall no longer live a life of hypocrisy, of suppressed rage and
scorn. I know how much I am asking; perhaps it means that for my sake
you give up everything else that is dear to you'----

The thought checked him. He looked at her despondently.

'You can trust me,' Sidwell answered, mov