him after you spoke to me, and got it back again. There is
your mother's necklace."

"I am sorry for this, Anton."

"Why sorry?"

"We are so poor that I shall be driven to take it elsewhere again. I
cannot keep such a thing in the house while father wants. But better he
should want than--"

"Than what, Nina?"

"There would be something like cheating in borrowing money on the same
thing twice."

"Then put it by, and I will be your lender."

"No; I will not borrow from you. You are the only one in the world that
I could never repay. I cannot borrow from you. Keep this thing, and if
I am ever your wife, then you shall give it me."

"If you are ever my wife?"

"Is there no room for such an if? I hope there is not, Anton. I wish it
were as certain as the sun's rising. But people around us are so cruel!
It seems, sometimes, as though the world were against us. And then you,
yourself--"

"What of me myself, Nina?"

"I do not think you trust me altogether; and unless you trust me, I
know you will not make me your wife."

"That is certain; and yet I do not doubt that you will be my wife."

"But do you trust me? Do you believe in your heart of hearts that I
know nothing of that paper for which you are searching?" She paused
for a reply, but he did not at once make any. "Tell me," she went
on saying, with energy, "are you sure that I am true to you in that
matter, as in all others? Though I were starving--and it is nearly so
with me already--and though I loved you beyond even all heaven, as I
do, I do--I would not become your wife if you doubted me in any tittle.
Say that you doubt me, and then it shall be all over." Still he did not
speak. "Rebecca Loth will be a fitter wife for you than I can be," said
Nina.

"If you are not my wife, I shall never have a wife," said Trendellsohn.

In her ecstasy of delight, as she heard these words, she took up his
hand and kissed it; but she dropped it again, as she remembered that
she had not yet received the assurance that she needed. "But you do
believe me about this horrid paper?"

It was necessary that she should be made to go again through the fire.
In deliberate reflection he had made himself aware that such necessity
still existed. It might be that she had some inner reserve as to duty
towards her father. There was, possibly, some reason which he could
not fathom why she should still keep something back from him in this
matter. He did not, in truth, think that it