has never yet half revealed itself.
You sent me away from you because you feared love; you called me back
because you feared your fear--"

"No! No! You are reasoning now, not justifying! You are entrapping me!"

"Am I?"

"Yes, and I refuse to be entrapped! I know love--I know all the specious
things that love can say; the talk of independence, the talk of
equality! But I know the reality, too. The reality is the absolute
annihilation of the woman--the absolute merging of her identity."

"So that is love?"

"That is love."

He stood looking at her with a long profound look of deep restraint, of
great sadness.

"Maxine," he said, at last, "you have many gifts--a high intelligence, a
young body, a strong soul, but in the matter of love you are a little
child. To you, love is barter and exchange; but love is not that. Love
is nothing but a giving--an exhaustless giving of one's very best."

She tried to laugh. "I understand! I should give!"

"No, sweet, you should not. You cannot know the privileges of love, for
you do not know love."

"Oh, Ned! How cruel! How cruel!"

"You do not know love," he spoke, very gently, without any bitterness,
"and I do know it; for it has grown in me, day by day, in these long
months away from you. I am not to be praised, any more than you are to
be blamed. But I do love you--with my heart and my soul--with my life
and my strength. I would die for you, if dying would help you; and as it
won't, I will do the harder thing--live for you."

Her lips were parted, but they uttered no sound; her eyes, dark with
thought, searched his face.

"Oh, Maxine!" He caught her hand. "How low you have rated me--to think I
would wrest you from yourself! Is it my place to make life harder for
you?"

Still she gazed at him. "I do not understand," she said, in a frightened
whisper.

"Never mind, sweet! It doesn't matter if you never understand. Just give
me credit for one saving grace."

He spoke lightly, as men speak when they are bankrupt of hope, then with
a sudden breaking of his stoicism, he caught her in his arms, straining
her close, kissing her mouth, talking incoherently to himself.

"Oh, Maxine! Little faun of the green groves! If you could know! But
what am I that I should possess the kingdom of heaven?"

His ecstasy frightened her; she struggled to free herself.

"What is it?" she asked. "What is it?"

"Just love--no more, no less! Good-bye! Take your life--make it what you
wil