be a truer creature than I am; have seen
my wasted gifts, felt my capacity for better things, and looked for help
from many sources, but never found it till you came. Do you wonder that
I tried to make it mine? Adam, you are a self-elected missionary to the
world's afflicted; you can look beyond external poverty and see the
indigence of souls. I am a pauper in your eyes; stretch out your hand
and save me from myself."

Straight through the one vulnerable point in the man's pride went this
appeal to the man's pity. Indignation could not turn it aside, contempt
blunt its edge, or wounded feeling lessen its force; and yet it failed:
for in Adam Warwick justice was stronger than mercy, reason than
impulse, head than heart. Experience was a teacher whom he trusted; he
had weighed this woman and found her wanting; truth was not in her; the
patient endeavor, the hard-won success so possible to many was hardly so
to her, and a union between them could bring no lasting good to either.
He knew this; had decided it in a calmer hour than the present, and by
that decision he would now abide proof against all attacks from without
or from within. More gently, but as inflexibly as before, he said--

"I do put out my hand and offer you the same bitter draught of
self-contempt that proved a tonic to my own weak will. I can help, pity,
and forgive you heartily, but I dare not marry you. The tie that binds
us is a passion of the senses, not a love of the soul. You lack the
moral sentiment that makes all gifts and graces subservient to the
virtues that render womanhood a thing to honor as well as love. I can
relinquish youth, beauty, worldly advantages, but I must reverence above
all others the woman whom I marry, and feel an affection that elevates
me by quickening all that is noblest and manliest in me. With you I
should be either a tyrant or a slave. I will be neither, but go solitary
all my life rather than rashly mortgage the freedom kept inviolate so
long, or let the impulse of an hour mar the worth of coming years."

Bent and broken by the unanswerable accusations of what seemed a
conscience in human shape, Ottila had sunk down before him with an
abandonment as native to her as the indomitable will which still refused
to relinquish hope even in despair.

"Go," she said, "I am not worthy of salvation. Yet it is hard, very
hard, to lose the one motive strong enough to save me, the one sincere
affection of my life."

Warwick had ex