urage further questioning, and she
moved in her seat and looked away again.

'That man does not love you,' Logotheti said. 'If he did, nothing could
hinder your marriage, since he knows that you are willing.'

'There may be a reason you don't understand,' Margaret answered
reluctantly.

'A man who loves does not reason. A man who wants a certain woman wants
nothing else, any more than a man who is dying of thirst can want
anything but drink. He must have it or die, and nothing can keep him
from it if he sees it.'

There was a shade of more energy in his tone now, though he still spoke
quietly enough. Margaret was silent again, possibly because the same
thought had crossed her own mind during the last few days, and even an
hour ago, when she had met Lushington at the door. Since she was
willing to marry him, in spite of his birth, could he be in earnest as
long as he hesitated?

She wished that he might have said what Logotheti was saying now,
instead of reasoning with her about a point of honour.

'When people think themselves in love and hesitate,' Logotheti
continued, almost speaking her own thoughts aloud, 'it is because
something else in them is stronger than love, or quite as strong.'

'There may be honour,' said Margaret, defending Lushington in her mind,
out of sheer loyalty.

'There ought to be, sometimes, but it is more in the nature of real
love to tear honour to pieces than to be torn in pieces for it. I'm not
defending such things, I'm only stating a fact. More men have betrayed
their country for love than have sacrificed love to save their
country!'

'That's not a very noble view of love!'

'If you were passionately in love with a man, should you like him to
sacrifice you in order to save his country, especially if his country
were not yours? If it were your own, you might be as patriotic as he
and you would associate yourself with him in the salvation of your own
people. But that would not be a fair case. The question is whether, in
a matter that concerns him only and not yourself, you would set his
honour higher than his love for you and let yourself be sacrificed,
without feeling that if he had loved you as you would like to be loved
he would forfeit his honour rather than give you up.'

'That's a dreadfully hard question to answer!' Margaret smiled.

'It is only hard to answer, because you are conscious of a convention
called honour which man expects you to set above everything. Very good