York some part
of every winter. But that is not the question. What cannot be known in
New York cannot be known in Woodsome. I should not like my Woodsome
friends to believe we were engaged, if in New York they constantly met
you behaving as if we were not engaged. If you have any imagination,
you can see what a painful position a half-engagement would put me
in."

"Now, Yanna, you are getting impossible again. You will not do
anything to meet me. In disagreements, people generally each 'give in'
a little."

"Not on such a question as this. I will have all of love's honor and
service, or I will have none of it. I hate secrecy in anything, I fear
it in love. Besides, my father says, it is a wrong to me. His decision
includes mine, Harry."

"Then I suppose my visit is utterly useless. Mother said it would
be."

"So you _have_ been talking to Mrs. Filmer again?"

"Oh! you do press a poor distracted man so hardly! Mother talked to
me. And she seems a little bitter about you. What did you say to her,
Yanna?"

"Ask her what she said to me, Harry."

"Of course, I shall work with all my power to get our engagement on a
footing to please you, Yanna. But you know, a mother is a mother, and
it is hard to go against her when she is working for the good of your
sister, and your family, and all that; and----"

"Our engagement! We are not engaged!" They were at the door by this
time, and Yanna said: "Will you come in, Harry?"

"Of course I will come in. What do you mean by saying, 'We are not
engaged'? You said you loved me. You said you would marry me. Is not
your promise an engagement?"

"Only under certain conditions; which conditions you are not willing
to fulfil."

"Not able! not able! Yanna."

"Nonsense! If you are man enough to ask a woman to be your wife, you
ought to be man enough to do it with all customary honors. There is no
use in further discussion, Harry. From the position I have taken, I
cannot, in justice to myself, move a hair's breadth."

"Is a man not to honor his mother, and help her, and so on?"

"A man is to honor his mother with all his heart. He is to help her in
every way he can; but he is also to honor the woman he asks to be his
wife. It is a poor rose-tree that can only bear one perfect rose; it
is a poor heart that has room only for one perfect love;--but I will
not even seem to plead, for what ought to be rendered with the utmost
spontaneity. We had better say '_Good-bye!_'"

She ros