g
for years, with "our backs to the wall," even I can't go on
cataloguing Greek vases. I acknowledge that now. So much I grant
you. But what else am I good for?'

The colour flushed in her fair skin, and her eyes filled again with
tears.

'Come and help!' she said simply. 'There is so much to do. And for
you--a large landowner--there is everything to do.'

His face darkened.

'Yes, if I had the courage for it. But morally I am a weakling--you
know it. Do you remember that I once said to you if Desmond fell, I
should go with him--or after him?'

She waited a moment before replying, and then said with energy,
'That would be just desertion!--_he_ would tell you so.'

Their eyes met, and the passion in hers subdued him. It was a
strange dialogue, as though between two souls bared and stripped of
everything but the realities of feeling.

'Would it be? That might be argued. But anyway I should have done
it--the very night Desmond died--but for you!'

'For me?' she said, shading her eyes with a hand that trembled. 'No,
Mr. Mannering, you could not have done such a thing!--for your
honour's sake--for your children's sake.'

'Neither would have restrained me. I was held to life by one
thread--one hope only--'

She was silent.

'--the hope that if I was to put my whole life to school again--to
burn what I had adored, and adore what I had burned--the one human
being in the world who could teach me such a lesson--who had begun
to teach it me--would stand by me--would put her hand in mine--and
lead me.'

His voice broke down. Elizabeth, shaken from head to foot, could
only hide her face and wait. Even the strength to protest--'Not
now!--not yet!' seemed to have gone from her. He went on vehemently:

'Oh, don't imagine that I am making you an ordinary proposal--or
that I am going to repeat to you the things I said to you--like a
fool--in Cross Wood. Then I offered you a bargain--and I see now
that you despised me as a huckster! You were to help my hobby; I was
to help yours. That was all I could find to say. I didn't know how
to tell you that all the happiness of my life depended on your
staying at Mannering. I was unwilling to acknowledge it even to
myself. I have been accustomed to put sentiment aside--to try and
ignore it. To _feel_ as I did was itself so strange a thing to me,
that I struggled to express it as prosaically as possible. Well,
then, you were astonished--and repelled. That I saw--I realized it
ind