mised to
give herself to you for your own sake, renouncing the marriage vows?"

"No! Good God--"

"Then--is it because you do not yet love me enough? For I shall not give
myself to you until you do."

He hung his head.

"I think that is it," she said, sorrowfully.

"No. I'm no good," he said. "And that's the truth, Valerie." A dark
flush stained his face and he turned it away, sitting there in silence,
his tense clasp tightening on the arms of the chair. Then he said, still
not meeting her eyes:

"Whatever your beliefs are you practice them; you are true to your
convictions, loyal to yourself. I am only a miserable, rotten specimen
of man who is true to nothing--not even to himself. I'm not worth your
trouble, Valerie."

"Louis!"

"Well, what am I?" he demanded in fierce disgust. "I have told you that
I believe in the conventions--and I violate every one of them. I'm a
spectacle for gods and men!" His face was stern with self-disgust: he
forced himself to meet her gaze, wincing under it; but he went on:

"I know well enough that I deserve your contempt; I've acquired plenty
of self-contempt already. But I _do_ love you, God knows how or in what
manner, but I love you, cur that I am--and I respect you--oh, more that
you understand, Valerie. And if I ask your mercy on such a man as I am,
it is not because I deserve it."

"My mercy, Louis?"

She rose to her knees and laid both hands on his shoulders.

"You _are_ only a man, dear--with all the lovable faults and sins and
contradictions of one. But there is no real depravity in you any more
than there is in me. Only--I think you are a little more selfish than I
am--you lose self-command--" she blushed--"but that is because you are
only a man after all.... I think, perhaps, that a girl's love is
different in many ways. Dear, my love for you is perfectly honest. You
believe it, don't you? If for one moment I thought it was otherwise, I'd
never let you see me again. If I thought for one moment that anything
spiritual was to be gained for us by denying that love to you or to
myself--or by living out life alone without you, I have the courage to
do it. Do you doubt it?"

"No," he said.

She sighed, and her gaze passed from his and became remote for a moment,
then:

"I want to live my life with you," she said, wistfully; "I want to be to
you all that the woman you love could possibly be. But to me, the giving
of myself to you is to be, in my heart, a ceremony