he
loved you, knew that he had asked you to be his wife; and then I could
not rest--I could do nothing, but come to you and tell you. Listen,
signorina, and of your goodness listen with kindness in your heart. You
think of me as a man past his prime, as one who is middle-aged,
cold-hearted. But you may remember that I told you I was but little
older than you. It is true; I am but young in years; I have my life yet
to live, and you will believe me, I am sure, when I tell you that never
man felt towards a woman as I feel towards you. Signorina, I think of
you always. Ever since I first saw you I have thought of you. Never for
an hour have you been absent from my thoughts, never for an hour. Asleep
or awake there is but one face, one form which haunts me. Only one voice
rings in my ears. I have fought against this feeling--only God knows
how--but all in vain, all in vain. Before I saw Herbert Briarfield
to-day, before--ah, long before--I had dreamed of our future, dreamed
with a joy which is unknown to you, and which you cannot understand, and
rather than give up those dreams, I would die. Oh, yes, I would much
rather die."

His voice quivered with passion, his eyes blazed with a strange light.
All his old cynical indifference was gone. There could be no doubt about
it, he was fearfully, terribly in earnest. Olive felt this, and the very
earnestness of his appeal moved her. But more than that, the man's
personality mastered her. He seemed to fill the whole of her horizon. At
that moment Herbert Briarfield faded into nothing; it was as though he
did not exist, while the past was dim, far--far away.

"For the last hour, no one knows what I have suffered," he went on; "for
the very thought of you being his wife is terrible to me. You do not
know what all this means to me; you cannot know; I could not tell you.
To give up the hopes, the dreams of years--to have them destroyed----"

"Of years?" questioned Olive quickly. She was glad of this mistake which
he had made. Somehow it gave her a chance of speaking, of giving some
little expression to the wild tumult of her heart.

"Of years," repeated the other quickly. "Ah, you do not understand. I am
an Eastern, and an Eastern thinks long, long thoughts. Like every man,
I have dreamed of the woman I should love, and who should be all and in
all to me; and do you know, signorina, that when out on the sands of the
desert, all alone in the night, with the myriads of stars shining fr