st out. "And if I found a way, you could not understand. What do you
know?--what can you know?..."

I said this not in scorn, but in sheer helplessness. I was at a loss
before the august magnitude of my feeling, which I saw confronting me
like an enormous presence arising from that blue sea. It was no longer
a boy-and-girl affair; no longer an adventure; it was an immense and
serious happiness, to be paid for by an infinity of sacrifice.

"I am a woman," she said, with a fluttering dignity. "And it is because
I know how women suffer from what men say...."

Her face flushed. It flushed to the very bands of her hair. She was
rosy all over the eyes and forehead. Rosy and ascetic, with something
outraged and inexpressibly sweet in her expression. My great emotion was
between us like a mist, through which I beheld strange appearances. It
was as if an immaterial spirit had blushed before me. And suddenly I saw
tears--tears that glittered exceedingly, falling hard and round, like
pellets of glass, out of her faded eyes.

"Mrs. Williams," I cried, "you can't know how I love her. No one in the
world can know. When I think of her--and I think of her always--it seems
to me that one life is not enough to show my devotion. I love her like
something unchangeable and unique--altogether out of the world; because
I see the world through her. I would still love her if she had made me
miserable and unhappy."

She exclaimed a low "Ah!" and turned her head away for a moment.

"But one cannot express these things," I continued. "There are no words.
Words are not meant for that. I love her so that, were I to die this
moment, I verily believe my soul, refusing to leave this earth, would
remain hovering near her...."

She interrupted me with a sort of indulgent horror. "Sh! sh!" I mustn't
talk like that. I really must not--and inconsequently she declared she
was quite willing to believe me. Her husband and herself had not slept a
wink for thinking of us. The notion of the fat, sleepy Williams, sitting
up all night to consider, owlishly, the durability of my love, cooled
my excitement. She thought they had been providentially thrown into our
way to give us an opportunity of reconsidering our decision. There were
still so many difficulties in the way.

I did not see any; her utter incomprehension began to weary me, while
she still twined her fingers, wiped her eyes by stealth, as it were, and
talked unflinchingly. She could not have made