his woman were tough.
Her family were not the stuff out of which voluntary heroes are made.
He saw, too, she was thrusting it back,--out of thought: it was her
temperament to do that.

"So, now, Grey," he said, cheerfully, "the story's told. Shall we lay
that ghost of the old life, and see what these healthful new years have
for us?"

Paul Blecker's voice was never so strong or pure: whatever of coarseness
had clung to him fell off then, as he came nearer to the weak woman
whom God had given to him to care for; whatever of latent manhood, of
chivalry, slept beneath, some day to make him an earnest husband and
father, and helpful servant of the True Man, came out in his eager face
and eye, now. He took her two hands in his: how strong his muscles were!
how the man's full pulse throbbed healthfully against her own! She
looked up with a sudden blush and smile. A minute ago she thought
herself so strong to renounce! She meant, this weak, incomplete woman,
to keep to the shame of that foul old lie of hers, accepting that as her
portion for life. There is a chance comes to some few women, once in
their lives, to escape into the full development of their natures by
contact with the one soul made in the same mould as their own. It came
to this woman to-night. Grey was no theorist about it: all that she knew
was, that, when Paul Blecker stood near her, for the first time in her
life she was not alone,--that, when he spoke, his words were but more
forcible utterances of her own thought,--that, when she thought of
leaving him, it was like drawing the soul from her living body, to leave
it pulseless, dead. Yet she would do it.

"I am not fit to be any man's wife. If you had come to me when I was a
child, it might have been,--it ought to have been,"--with an effort to
draw her hands from him.

Blecker only smiled, and seated her gently on the mossy boll of the
beech-tree.

"Stay. Listen to me," he whispered.

And Grey, being a woman and no philosopher, sat motionless, her hands
folded, nerveless, where he had let them fall, her face upturned, like
that of the dead maiden waiting the touch of infinite love to tremble
and glow back into beautiful life. He did not speak, did not touch her,
only bent nearer. It seemed to him, as the pure moonlight then held them
close in its silent bound, the great world hushed without, the light air
scarce daring to touch her fair, waiting face, the slow-heaving breast,
the kindling glow in her