hen I have offered myself to
you, and am refused?"

"How could I write?" he said. "I tried once or twice, and then I saw I
must wait until I could tell you face to face all that I think of your
bravery and your goodness. And now that I see you Natalie, it is not a
bit better: I can't tell you; I am so happy to be near you, to be beside
you, and hear your voice, that I don't think I can say anything at all."

"I am refused, then?" said she, shyly.

"Refused!" he exclaimed. "There are some things one cannot refuse--like
the sunshine. But do you know what a terrible sacrifice you are making?"

"It is you, then, who are making no sacrifice at all," she said,
reproachfully. "What do I sacrifice more than every girl must sacrifice
when she marries? England is not my home as it is your home; we have
lived everywhere; I have no childhood's friends to leave, as many a girl
has."

"Your father--"

"After a little while my father will scarcely miss me; he is too busy."

But presently she added,

"If you had remained in England I should never have been your wife."

"Why?" he said with some surprise.

"I should never have married against my father's wishes," she said,
thoughtfully. "No. My promise to you was that I would be your wife, or
the wife of no one. I would have kept that promise. But as long as we
could have seen each other, and been with each other from time to time,
I don't think I could have married against my father's wish. Now it is
quite different. Your going to America has changed it all. Ah, my dear
friend, you don't know what I suffered one or two nights before I could
decide what was right for me to do!"

"I can guess," he said, in a low voice, in answer to that brief sigh of
hers.

Then she grew more cheerful in manner.

"But that is all over; and now, am I accepted? I think you are like
Naomi: it was only when she saw that Ruth was very determined to go with
her that she left off protesting. And I am to consider America as my
future home? Well, at all events, one will be able to breathe freely
there. It is not a country weighed down with standing armies and
conscriptions and fortifications. How could one live in a town like
Coblentz, or Metz, or Brest? The poor wretches marching this way and
marching that--you watch them from your hotel window--the young men and
the middle-aged men--and you know that they would rather be away at
their farms, or in their factories, or saw-pits, or engine-houses,