"Kiss me!"

She yielded mechanically; she kissed me--with cold lips, with big tears
in her eyes.

"You don't love me!" I burst out, angrily. "You kiss me as if it were a
duty. Your lips are cold--your heart is cold. You don't love me!"

She looked at me sadly, with a patient smile.

"One of us must remember the difference between your position and mine,"
she said. "You are a man of stainless honor, who holds an undisputed
rank in the world. And what am I? I am the deserted mistress of a thief.
One of us must remember that. You have generously forgotten it. I must
bear it in mind. I dare say I am cold. Suffering has that effect on me;
and, I own it, I am suffering now."

I was too passionately in love with her to feel the sympathy on which
she evidently counted in saying those words. A man can respect a woman's
scruples when they appeal to him mutely in her looks or in her tears;
but the formal expression of them in words only irritates or annoys him.

"Whose fault is it that you suffer?" I retorted, coldly. "I ask you to
make my life a happy one, and your life a happy one. You are a cruelly
wronged woman, but you are not a degraded woman. You are worthy to be
my wife, and I am ready to declare it publicly. Come back with me to
England. My boat is waiting for you; we can set sail in two hours."

She dropped into a chair; her hands fell helplessly into her lap.

"How cruel!" she murmured, "how cruel to tempt me!" She waited a little,
and recovered her fatal firmness. "No!" she said. "If I die in doing it,
I can still refuse to disgrace you. Leave me, Mr. Germaine. You can show
me that one kindness more. For God's sake, leave me!"

I made a last appeal to her tenderness.

"Do you know what my life is if I live without you?" I asked. "My mother
is dead. There is not a living creature left in the world whom I love
but you. And you ask me to leave you! Where am I to go to? what am I
to do? You talk of cruelty! Is there no cruelty in sacrificing
the happiness of my life to a miserable scruple of delicacy, to an
unreasoning fear of the opinion of the world? I love you and you love
me. There is no other consideration worth a straw. Come back with me to
England! come back and be my wife!"

She dropped on her knees, and taking my hand put it silently to her
lips. I tried to raise her. It was useless: she steadily resisted me.

"Does this mean No?" I asked.

"It means," she said in faint, broken tones, "that I prize y