e for a seat for second-class passengers
There were others now on the farther end of it; but there was a feeling
that when Caldigate and Mrs. Smith were together it would not be civil
to intrude upon their privacy. At this time it was dark; but their eyes
had become used to the gloom, and each could see the other's face. 'Love
you!' she repeated, looking up at him, speaking in a very low voice, but
yet, oh so clearly, so that not a fraction of a sound was lost to his
ears, with no special emotion in her face, with no contortion, no
grimace, but with her eyes fixed upon his. 'How should it be possible
that I should not love you? For two months we have been together as
people seldom are in the world,--as they never can be without hating
each other or loving each other thoroughly. You have been very good to
me who am all alone and desolate. And you are clever, educated,--and a
man. How should I not love you? And I know from the touch of your hand,
from your breath when I feel it on my face, from the fire of your eye,
and from the tenderness of your mouth, that you, too, love me.'

'I do,' he said.

'But as there may be marriage without love, so there may be love without
marriage. You cannot but feel how little you know of me, and ignorant as
you are of so much, that to marry me might be--ruin.' It was just what
he had told himself over and over again, when he had been trying to
resolve what he would do in regard to her. 'Don't you know that?'

'I know that it might have been so among the connections of home life.'

'And to you the connections of home life may all come back. That woman
talked about your "roll of ancestors." Coming from her it was absurd.
But there was some truth in it. You know that were you to marry me, say
to-morrow, in Melbourne, it would shut you out from--well, not the
possibility but the probability of return.'

'I do not want to go back.'

'Nor do I want to hinder you from doing so. If we were alike desolate,
alike alone, alike cast out, oh then, what a heaven of happiness I
should think had been opened to me by the idea of joining myself to you!
There is nothing I could not do for you. But I will not be a millstone
round your neck.'

She had taken so much the more prominent part in all this that he felt
himself compelled by his manliness to say something in contradiction to
it--something that should have the same flavour about it as had her
self-abnegation and declared passion. He also must b