be an outcast. She will not even have a name."

"She would not be advised. She made her choice in defiance of an
explicit warning of the inevitable results, and she must abide by it. I
challenge the most searching inquiry into my conduct, Mr. Lind. It will
be found, if the truth be told, that I spared her no luxury before she
left me; and that, far from being the aggressor, it is I who have the
right to complain of insult and desertion."

"Still, even granting that her unhappy position may have rendered her a
little sore and impatient at times, do you not owe her some forbearance
since she gave up her home and her friends for you?"

"Sacrifice for sacrifice, mine was the greater of the two. Like her, I
have lost my friends and my position here--to some extent, at least.
Worse, I have let my youth slip by in fruitless pursuit of her. For the
home which she hated, I offered her one ten times more splendid. I gave
her the devotion of a gentleman to replace the indifference of a
blacksmith. What have I not done for her? I freed her from her bondage;
I carried her across the globe; I watched her, housed her, fed her,
clothed her as a princess. I loved her with a love that taught her a
meaning of the word she had never known before. And when I had served
her turn--when I had rescued her from her husband and placed her beyond
his reach--when she became surfeited with a wealth of chivalrous love
which she could not comprehend, and when a new world opened before her a
fresh field for intrigue, I was assailed with slanderous lies, and
forsaken. Do you think, Mr. Lind, that in addition to this, I will
endure the reproaches of any man--even were he my own father?"

"But she suffers more, being a woman. The world will be comparatively
lenient toward you. If you and she were married and settled, with no
consciousness of being in a false position, and no wearing fear of
detection, you would get on together quite differently."

"It may be so, but I shall never put it to the test."

"Listen a moment, Sholto. Just consider the matter calmly and
rationally. I am a rich man--at least, I can endow Marian better than
you perhaps think. I see that you feel aggrieved, and that you fear
being forced into a marriage which you have, as you say--I fully admit
it, most fully--a perfect right to decline. But I am urging you to make
Marian your legal wife solely because it is the best course for both of
you. That, I assure you, is the feeling o