u obedient?"

"You know that well enough. I have had no Gertrude with whom I have
vacillated, whether for the sake of love or lucre. Whatever you may
be,--whether mean or noble,--you are the only man with whom I can
endure to live, for whom I would endure to die. Of course I had
not expected that your love should be like mine. How should it be
so, seeing that you are a man and that I am but a woman." Here he
attempted to seat himself by her on the sofa, which she occupied, but
she gently repulsed him, motioning him towards the chair which he had
occupied, "Sit there, Frank," she said, "so that we may look into
each other's faces and talk seriously. Is it to come to this then,
that I am to ruin you at last?"

"There will be no ruin."

"But there will, if we are married now. Shall I tell you the kind of
life which would satisfy me?"

"Some little place abroad?" he asked.

"Oh, dear, no! No place to which you would be confined at all. If
I may remain as I am, knowing that you intend to marry no one else,
feeling confident that there is a bond binding us together even
though we should never become man and wife, I should be, if not
happy, at least contented."

"That is a cold prospect."

"Cold;--but not ice-cold, as would have been the other. Cold, but not
wretchedly cold, as would be the idea always present to me that I had
reduced you to poverty. Frank, I am so far selfish that I cannot bear
to abandon the idea of your love. But I am not so far selfish as to
wish to possess it at the expense of your comfort. Shall it be so?"

"Be how?" said he, speaking almost in anger.

"Let us remain just as we are. Only you will promise me, that as I
cannot be your wife there shall be no other. I need hardly promise
you that there will be no other husband." Now he sat frowning at
her, while she, still pressing back her hair with her hands, looked
eagerly into his face. "If this will be enough for you," she said,
"it shall be enough for me."

"No, by G----d!"

"Frank!"

"It will certainly not be enough for me. I will have nothing to do
with so damnable a compact."

"Damnable!"

"Yes; that is what I call it. That is what any man would call
it,--and any woman, too, who would speak her mind."

"Then, Sir, perhaps you will be kind enough to make your proposition.
I have made mine, such as it is, and am sorry that it should not have
been received at any rate with courtesy." But as she said this there
was a gleam of a bri