let me take care of you. Can you trust me to that extent?"

Diana's lips had grown white with fear and astonishment. "You do not
know!"--she gasped. But his answer was steady and sweet.

"I think I do."

"All?"

"All I need to know."

"It would be very, very wrong to you, Mr. Masters!" said Diana, hiding
her face.

"No," he answered in the same gentle way. "To give me what I long for?"

"But--but--I have nothing to give in return," she said, answering not
the form of his words, but the reality under them.

"I will take my risk of that. I told you, I have enough for both. And I
might add, to last out our lives. I only want to have the privilege of
taking care of you."

"My heart is dead!"--cried Diana piteously.

"Mine isn't. And yours is not. It is only sick, but not unto death; and
I want to shelter and nurse it to health again. May I?"

"You cannot," said Diana. "I am not worth anybody's looking at any
more. There is no life left in me. I am not good enough for you, Mr.
Masters. You ought to have a whole heart--and a large one--in return
for your own."

"I do not want any return," said he. "Not at present, beyond that trust
which you so kindly have given me. And if I never have any more, I will
be content, Diana, to be allowed to do all the giving myself. You must
spend your life somewhere. Can you spend it anywhere better than at my
side?"

"No,"--Diana breathed rather than spoke.

"'Then it's a bargain?" said he, taking her hand. Diana did not
withdraw it, and stooping down he touched his lips gently to hers. This
was so unlike one of Evan's kisses, that it did not even remind Diana
of them. She sat dazed and stunned, hardly knowing how she felt, only
bewildered; yet dimly conscious that she was offered a shelter, and a
lot which, if she had never known Evan, she would have esteemed the
highest possible. An empty lot now, as any one must be; an unequal
exchange for Mr. Masters; an unfair transaction; at the same time, for
her, a hiding-place from the world's buffetings. She would escape so
from her mother's exactions and rule; from young Flandin's following
and pretensions; from the pointed finger of gossip. True, that finger
had never been levelled at her, not yet; but every one who has a secret
sore spot knows the dread of its being discovered and touched. And
Diana had never been wont to mind her mother's exactions, or to rebel
against her rule; but lately, for a year past, without knowing or
g