"I thought you would come to me, Doctor Blecker."

"Call me Paul," roughly. "I was coarser born and bred than you. I want
to think that matters nothing to you."

She looked up proudly.

"You know it matters nothing. I am not vulgar."

"No, Grey. But--it is curious, but no one ever called me Paul, as boy or
man. It is a sign of equality; and I've always had, in the _melee,_ the
underneath taint about me. You are not vulgar enough to care for it.
Yours is the highest and purest nature I ever knew. Yet I know it is
right for you to call me Paul. Your soul and mine stand on a plane
before God."

The childish flush left her face; the timid woman-look was in it now. He
bent nearer.

"They stand there alone, Grey."

She drew back from him, her hands nervously catching in the thick curls.

"You do not believe that?" his breath clogged and hot. "It is a fancy of
mine? not true?"

"It is true."

He caught the whisper, his face growing pale, his eyes flashing.

"Then you are mine, child! What is the meaning of these paltry
contradictions? Why do you evade me from day to day?"

"You promised me not to speak of this again,"--weakly.

"Pah! You have a man's straightforward, frank instinct, Grey; and this
is cowardly,--paltry, as I said before. I will speak of it again.
To-night is all that is left to me."

He seated her upon the beech-trunk. One could tell by the very touch
and glance of the man how the image of this woman stood solitary in his
coarser thoughts, delicate, pure: a disciple would have laid just such
reverential fingers on the robe of the Madonna. Then he stood off from
her, looking straight into her hazel eyes. Grey, with all her innocent
timidity, was the cooler, stronger, maybe, of the two: the poor Doctor's
passionate nature, buffeted from one anger and cheat to another in the
world, brought very little quiet or tact or aptitude in language for
this one hour. Yet, standing there, his man's sturdy heart throbbing
slow as an hysteric woman's, his eyeballs burning, it seemed to him that
all his life had been but the weak preface to these words he was going
to speak.

"It angers me," he muttered, abruptly, "that, when I come to you with
the thought that a man's or a woman's soul can hold but once in life,
you put me aside with the silly whims of a schoolgirl. It is not worthy
of you, Grey. You are not as other women."

What was this that he had touched? She looked up at him steadily,
her hands clasp