y old--I had been old for almost a year."

"And do you mean to remain old always, or will you ever let anyone teach
you to be young?"

Sabine looked away into the somber fir trees. They had got to a part of
the path where the woods on either side are black as night in their
depths.

"I--don't--know," she said, very low.

Lord Fordyce moved nearer to her.

"I wish you would let me try to take away all those somber thoughts I
see sometimes in those sweet eyes."

"How would you begin?"

"By loving you very much--and then by trying to make you love me."

"Does love take away dark thoughts, then--or does it bring them?"

"That depends upon the love," he told her, eagerly. "When it is great
enough to be unselfish, it must bring peace and happiness, surely----"

"They are good things--they are harmony--but----"

"Yes--what are the buts?" his voice trembled a little.

"Love seems to me to be a wild thing, a raging, tearing passion--Can it
ever be just tender and kind?"

"I wish you would let me prove to you that it can."

She looked into his face gravely, and there was nothing but honest
question in her violet eyes.

"To what end?" she asked.

"I would like you to marry me." He had said it now when he had not
intended to yet, and he was pale as death.

She shrank from him a little.

"But surely you know that I am not free!"

"I hoped I--believed that you can make yourself so--if you knew how I
love you! I have never really loved any woman before in my life. I
always thought they should be only recreations--but the moment I saw
you, my whole opinions changed."

She grew troubled.

"I wish you had not said this to me," she faltered. "I--do not know that
I wish to change my life. I could, of course, be free, I suppose--if I
wanted to be--but--I am not sure. What would it mean if I listened to
you? Tell me! I am sometimes very lonely--and I like you so much."

"I want to make you feel more than that, but I will be content with
whatever you will give me. I do not care one atom what dark page is in
your past, I know it can have been nothing of your own fault, and if it
were, I should not care--I only care for you--Sabine--will you not tell
me that you will try to let me make you happy. It would mean that, that
I should devote my whole life to making you happy."

"A woman should be contented with that, surely," she said. And if Henry
Fordyce had had his usual critical wits about him unclouded by love, he