ed you
and armed the world against you,' said Dacier.

'I can fly. The world is wide.'

'Time slips. Your youth is wasted. If you escape the man, he will have
triumphed in keeping you from me. And I thirst for you; I look to you for
aid and counsel; I want my mate. You have not to be told how you inspire
me? I am really less than half myself without you. If I am to do anything
in the world, it must be with your aid, you beside me. Our hands are
joined: one leap! Do you not see that after . . . well, it cannot be
friendship. It imposes rather more on me than I can bear. You are not the
woman to trifle; nor I; Tony, the man for it with a woman like you. You
are my spring of wisdom. You interdict me altogether--can you?--or we
unite our fates, like these hands now. Try to get yours away!'

Her effort ended in a pressure. Resistance, nay, to hesitate at the
joining of her life with his after her submission to what was a scorching
fire in memory, though it was less than an embrace, accused her of worse
than foolishness.

'Well, then,' said she, 'wait three days. Deliberate. Oh! try to know
yourself, for your clear reason to guide you. Let us be something better
than the crowd abusing us, not simple creatures of impulse--as we choose
to call the animal. What if we had to confess that we took to our heels
the moment the idea struck us! Three days. We may then pretend to a
philosophical resolve. Then come to me: or write to me.'

'How long is it since the old Rovio morning, Tony?'

'An age.'

'Date my deliberations from that day.'

The thought of hers having to be dated possibly from an earlier day,
robbed her of her summit of feminine isolation, and she trembled, chilled
and flushed; she lost all anchorage.

'So it must be to-morrow,' said he, reading her closely, 'not later.
Better at once. But women are not to be hurried.'

'Oh! don't class me, Percy, pray! I think of you, not of myself.'

'You suppose that in a day or two I might vary?'

She fixed her eyes on him, expressing certainty of his unalterable
stedfastness. The look allured. It changed: her head shook. She held away
and said: 'No, leave me; leave me, dear, dear friend. Percy, my dearest!
I will not "play the sex." I am yours if . . . if it is your wish. It may
as well be to-morrow. Here I am useless; I cannot write, not screw a
thought from my head. I dread that "process of the Law" a second time.
To-morrow, if it must be. But no impulses. Fortune is