ll me that if I would surrender myself completely to them I
would find peace," she ended, slowly, sadly, as if in confession.

"Peace! Yes, the peace of the epileptic or the mad. No, no, joy and
health do not lie that way. If I were the scientist merely, I would
say, 'Keep on, and I will stand by to observe your struggles.' But I
am not, I am something else than scientist. It angers and agonizes me
to see you tortured. I cannot endure it and I will not. In order that
I may do all that I hope for, you must give yourself wholly into my
care." He was speaking now in a low and throbbing voice, oblivious of
time and space. "I must be something more than physician or friend. I
have been saying 'must' to you, but I am, after all, a very strange
autocrat. My power is dependent on you." Then, in answer to her
questioning eyes, he hurried on: "I love you, dear girl, and if you
find you can trust yourself to me, fully, in this way, then I am sure
of victory. Can you say this? I hope you can, for then I will have the
most powerful magician in all the world fighting on my side. Are you
able to do this? Can you say you love me and that you will come to me,
trusting in me as in a husband?"

No one was astir in the car but the porter, but had it been filled
with clamoring tongues and seeking, impertinent eyes, she would have
been conscious only of his tender glance, his earnest voice, and the
momentous question being pressed upon her. She struggled to speak, but
could not, and he hastened on: "I will be honest with you. Your mother
does not trust me. She knows and resents my feeling towards you. She
knows also that I consider her separation from you necessary, for a
time, and is hurt and saddened by it; but she will come to see the
necessity of this measure. I do not ask an immediate answer--though I
wish your heart were mine this minute--but I do want you to know that
from the first moment I saw you your life has been a part of mine. I
could not forget you, though I tried to do so, and I will not now give
you up."

She still sat like an exquisite statue of meditation, looking out into
the night, benumbed and breathless with the passion his words evoked.
Suddenly she turned and vehemently exclaimed: "You ought not to ask me
this. I'm not fit to be your wife."

"Let me be the judge of that."

[Illustration: "'YOU NEED NOT SPEAK--JUST PUT YOUR HAND IN MINE
AND I WILL UNDERSTAND'"]

"But you don't realize what I am. You must