h they might be
nothing till they made that request, then they became--things of
horror to me. But you were not a thing of horror. I could have become
your wife, and I think that I could have learned to love you."

"It is best as it is."

"I ought to say so too; but I have a doubt I should have liked to
be Duchess of Omnium, and perhaps I might have fitted the place
better than one who can as yet know but little of its duties or its
privileges. I may, perhaps, think that that other arrangement would
have been better even for you."

"I can take care of myself in that."

"I should have married you without loving you, but I should have done
so determined to serve you with a devotion which a woman who does
love hardly thinks necessary. I would have so done my duty that you
should never have guessed that my heart had been in the keeping of
another man."

"Another man!"

"Yes; of course. If there had been no other man, why not you? Am I
so hard, do you think that I can love no one? Are you not such a one
that a girl would naturally love,--were she not preoccupied? That a
woman should love seems as necessary as that a man should not."

"A man can love too."

"No;--hardly. He can admire, and he can like, and he can fondle and
be fond. He can admire, and approve, and perhaps worship. He can know
of a woman that she is part of himself, the most sacred part, and
therefore will protect her from the very winds. But all that will
not make love. It does not come to a man that to be separated from
a woman is to be dislocated from his very self. A man has but one
centre, and that is himself. A woman has two. Though the second may
never be seen by her, may live in the arms of another, may do all for
that other that man can do for woman,--still, still, though he be
half the globe asunder from her, still he is to her the half of her
existence. If she really love, there is, I fancy, no end of it. To
the end of time I shall love Frank Tregear."

"Tregear!"

"Who else?"

"He is engaged to Mary."

"Of course he is. Why not;--to her or whomsoever else he might like
best? He is as true I doubt not to your sister as you are to your
American beauty,--or as you would have been to me had fancy held. He
used to love me."

"You were always friends."

"Always;--dear friends. And he would have loved me if a man were
capable of loving. But he could sever himself from me easily, just
when he was told to do so. I thought that I could d