ve you free? I'm that man: the doctors give me six months more of
life. I'm alone in the world, with no one dependent upon me, nothing to
look forward to but a death that will benefit nobody--a useless end to a
useless life.... Will you take my name to free yourself? Heaven my
witness, you're welcome to it."

"Oh," she breathed, aghast, "what are you saying?"

"I'm proposing marriage," he said, with his quaint, one-sided smile.
"Please listen: I came to this place to make a quick end to my
troubles--but I've changed my mind about that, now. What's happened in
this room has made me see that nobody has any right to--hasten things.
But I mean to leave the country--immediately--and let death find me
where it will. I shall leave behind me a name and a little money,
neither of any conceivable use to me. Will you take them, employ them to
make your life what it was meant to be? It's a little thing, but it will
make me feel a lot more fit to go out of this world--to know I've left
at least one decent act to mark my memory. There's only this far-fetched
chance--I _may_ live. It's a million-to-one shot, but you've got to bear
it in mind. But really you can't lose--"

"Oh, stop, stop!" she implored him, half hysterical. "To think of
marrying to benefit by the death of a man like you--!"

"You've no right to look at it that way." He had a wry, secret smile for
his specious sophistry. "You're being asked to confer, not to accept, a
favour. It's just an act of kindness to a hopeless man. I'd go mad if I
didn't know you were safe from a recurrence of the folly of this
afternoon."

"Don't!" she cried--"don't tempt me. You've no right.... You don't know
how frantic I am...."

"I do," he countered frankly. "I'm depending on just that to swing you
to my point of view. You've got to come to it. I mean you shall marry
me."

She stared up at him, spell-bound, insensibly yielding to the domination
of his will. It was inevitable. He was scarcely less desperate than
she--and no less overwrought and unstrung; and he was the stronger; in
the natural course of things his will could not but prevail. She was
little more than a child, accustomed to yield and go where others led or
pointed out the path. What resistance could she offer to the domineering
importunity of a man of full stature, arrogant in his strength
and--hounded by devils? And he in the fatuity of his soul believed that
he was right, that he was fighting for the girl's best int