r brave nor good of you!"

"That is not true! Were it any other woman, yes, what you say might be
true in one way. But I love you not because you are a woman. It is
because you are Ellen. You would be the only woman in the world, no
matter where we were nor how many were about us. Though I could choose
from all the world, it would be the same!"

She listened with her eyes far away, thinking, thinking. "It is the old
story," she sighed.

"Yes, the old story," I said. "It is the same story, the old one. There
are the witnesses, the hills, the sky."

"You seem to have thought of such things," she said to me, slowly. "I
have not thought. I have simply lived along, enjoying life, not
thinking. Do we love because we are but creatures? I cannot be loved
so--I will not be! I will not submit that what I have sometimes dreamed
shall be so narrow as this. John Cowles, a woman must be loved for
herself, not for her sex, by some one who is a man, but who is beside--"

"Oh, I have said all that. I loved you the first time I saw you--the
first time, there at the dance."

"And forgot, and cared for another girl the next day.' She argued that
all over again.

"That other girl was you," I once more reiterated.

"And again you forgot me."

"And again what made me forget you was yourself! Each time you were that
other girl, that other woman. Each time I have seen you you have been
different, and each time I have loved you over again. Each day I see you
now you are different, Ellen, and each day I love you more. How many
times shall I solve this same problem, and come to the same answer. I
tell you, the thing is ended and done for me."

"It is easy to think so here, with only the hills and skies to see and
hear."

"No, it would be the same," I said. "It is not because of that."

"It is not because I am in your power?" she said. She turned and faced
me, her hands on my shoulders, looking me full in the eye. The act a
brave one.

"Because I am in your power, John Cowles?" she asked. "Because by
accident you have learned that I am a comely woman, as you are a strong
man, normal, because I am fit to love, not ill to look at? Because a
cruel accident has put me where my name is jeopardized forever--in a
situation out of which I can never, never come clean again--is _that_
why? Do you figure that I am a woman because you are a man? Is that why?
Is it because you know I am human, and young, and fit for love? Ah, I
know that as wel