et your voice."

"For how long?"

"Oh--ever so long. Days and days."

"Days and days! ONLY days and days? Oh, the heart of a man! Days and
days!"

"But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. It was
not a full-blown love--it was the merest bud--red, fresh, vivid, but
small. It was a colossal passion in posse, a giant in embryo. It
never matured."

"So much the better, perhaps."

"Perhaps. But see how powerless is the human will against
predestination. We were prevented meeting; we have met. One feature
of the case remains the same amid many changes. You are still rich,
and I am still poor. Better than that, you have (judging by your last
remark) outgrown the foolish, impulsive passions of your early
girl-hood. I have not outgrown mine."

"I beg your pardon," said she, with vibrations of strong feeling in her
words. "I have been placed in a position which hinders such
outgrowings. Besides, I don't believe that the genuine subjects of
emotion do outgrow them; I believe that the older such people get the
worse they are. Possibly at ninety or a hundred they may feel they are
cured; but a mere threescore and ten won't do it--at least for me."

He gazed at her in undisguised admiration. Here was a soul of souls!

"Mrs. Charmond, you speak truly," he exclaimed. "But you speak sadly
as well. Why is that?"

"I always am sad when I come here," she said, dropping to a low tone
with a sense of having been too demonstrative.

"Then may I inquire why you came?"

"A man brought me. Women are always carried about like corks upon the
waves of masculine desires....I hope I have not alarmed you; but
Hintock has the curious effect of bottling up the emotions till one can
no longer hold them; I am often obliged to fly away and discharge my
sentiments somewhere, or I should die outright."

"There is very good society in the county for those who have the
privilege of entering it."

"Perhaps so. But the misery of remote country life is that your
neighbors have no toleration for difference of opinion and habit. My
neighbors think I am an atheist, except those who think I am a Roman
Catholic; and when I speak disrespectfully of the weather or the crops
they think I am a blasphemer."

She broke into a low musical laugh at the idea.

"You don't wish me to stay any longer?" he inquired, when he found that
she remained musing.

"No--I think not."

"Then tell me that I am to be gone."

"