utiful"--

"I am not beautiful! And if I were"--

"It wasn't to be helped! I saw from the first how good and noble you
were, and"--

"This is absurd!" she exclaimed. "I am neither good nor noble; and if I
were"--

"It wouldn't make any difference. Whatever you are, you are the one
woman in the world to me; and you always will be."

"Mr. Libby!"

"Oh, I must speak now! You were always thinking, because you had studied
a man's profession, that no one would think of you as a woman, as if
that could make any difference to a man that had the soul of a man in
him!"

"No, no!" she protested. "I did n't think that. I always expected to be
considered as a woman."

"But not as a woman to fall in love with. I understood. And that somehow
made you all the dearer to me. If you had been a girl like other girls,
I should n't have cared for you."

"Oh!"

"I did n't mean to speak to you to-day. But sometime I did mean to
speak; because, whatever I was, I loved you; and I thought you did n't
dislike me."

"I did like you," she murmured, "very much. And I respected you. But you
can't say that I ever gave you any hope in this--this--way." She almost
asked him if she had.

"No,--not purposely. And if you did, it 's over now. You have rejected
me. I understand that. There's no reason why you shouldn't. And I can
hold my tongue." He did not turn, but looked steadily past her at the
boat's head.

An emotion stirred in her breast which took the form of a reproach. "Was
it fair, then, to say this when neither of us could escape afterwards?"

"I did n't mean to speak," he said, without looking up, "and I never
meant to place you where you could n't escape."

It was true that she had proposed to go with him in the boat, and that
she had chosen to come back with him, when he had offered to have her
driven home from Leyden. "No, you are not to blame," she said, at last.
"I asked to some with you. Shall I tell you why?" Her voice began to
break. In her pity for him and her shame for herself the tears started
to her eyes. She did not press her question, but, "Thank you for
reminding me that I invited myself to go with you," she said, with
feeble bitterness.

He looked up at her in silent wonder, and she broke into a sob. He said
gently, "I don't suppose you expect me to deny that. You don't think me
such a poor dog as that."

"Why, of course not," she answered, with quivering lips, while she
pressed her handkerchief to her eye