t I am asking
for. I do. I know that you have been sought after on all hands. I know
that you are said to be rich, and that you can choose where you will.
Oh, yes; I have thought of all that, and I have realised my madness in
coming to you; but I am a desperate man. No, no, do not think I have
been simply attracted by a beautiful face. I have been seeing beautiful
faces any time these last ten years; it's not that. It's you, you. I
love you, I tell you, and if you cannot love me I shall go into a
blacker hell than I have yet known, and I shall go there with eagerness,
and eagerness born of despair. But with your love I can do anything. Oh,
I am not boasting, and I am not speaking before looking down to the
very depths, but with your love I can live a life worth the living; I
can make a position worth the making. Tell me, Olive Castlemaine, tell
me that you can give a thought, a kind thought, a loving thought to me."

In spite of herself she was moved. Olive Castlemaine admired strong,
masterful men. She could forgive rudeness where there was sincerity and
strength, and certainly she had never been wooed in this way before. She
could not help comparing Leicester with men like Purvis and Sprague.
They were weak and effeminate beside him. His very cynicism, his
faithlessness seemed to her but as an expression of a strong nature,
which was dissatisfied with conventions and a weak assent to commonly
accepted beliefs. It is true she had seen his weakness, she had heard
him express the purposelessness of his life; but she had also seen in
him another Radford Leicester which was great and strong. And yet he had
not won her. Something, she knew not what, told her to refuse. An
indefinable fear, perhaps owing to her Puritan training and her healthy
upbringing, kept her from uttering the words he longed to hear.

Still Radford Leicester had caused her heart to beat as it had never
beaten before; never had she been drawn by such an admiration, an
admiration akin to affection, as she was drawn now. He was a strong man,
and she instinctively felt that in him were the possibilities of
greatness and of goodness. She believed, too, that she could be the
means of translating those possibilities into actual life; but she did
not give him a ray of hope. A few minutes before, she felt like
speaking. Now the desire had gone. She had nothing to say, she knew not
why.

"You are thinking of what you have heard about me," he said, "are you
no