p my pulses. It just continues with every heart-beat, every
breath, every word, every silence--"

"Mr. Hamil!"

"Yes?"

"That _does_ sound like it--a little; and you must stop!"

"Of course I'll stop saying things, but _that_ doesn't stop with my
silence. It simply goes on and on increasing every--"

"Try silence," she said.

Motionless, shoulder to shoulder, the pulsing moments passed. Every
muscle tense, she sat there for a while, fearful that he could hear her
heart beating. Her palm, doubled in his, seemed to burn. Then little by
little a subtle relaxation stole over her; dreamy-eyed she sank back and
looked into the darkness. A sense of delicious well-being possessed her,
enmeshing thought in hazy lethargy, quieting pulse and mind.

Through it she heard his voice faintly; her own seemed unreal when she
answered.

He said: "Speaking of love; there is only one thing possible for me,
Shiela--to go on loving you. I can't kill hope, though there seems to be
none. But there's no use in saying so to myself for it is one of those
things no man believes. He may grow tired of hoping, and, saying there
is none, live on. But neither he nor Fate can destroy hope any more than
he can annihilate his soul. He may change in his heart. That he cannot
control. When love goes no man can stay its going."

"Do you think yours will go?"

"No. That is a lover's answer."

"What is a sane man's answer?"

"Ask some sane man, Shiela."

"I would rather believe you."

"Does it make you happy?"

"Yes."

"You wish me to love you?"

"Yes."

"You would love me--a little--if you could?"

She closed her eyes.

"Would you?" he asked again.

"Yes."

"But you cannot."

She said, dreamily: "I don't know. That is a dreadful answer to make.
But I don't know what is in me. I don't know what I am capable of
doing. I wish I knew; I wish I could tell you."

"Do you know what I think, Shiela?"

"What?"

"It's curious--but since I have known you--and about your birth--the
idea took shape and persisted--that--that--"

"What?" she asked.

"That, partly perhaps because of your physical beauty, and because of
your mind and its intelligence and generosity, you embodied something of
that type which this nation is developing."

"That is curious," she said softly.

"Yes; but you give me that impression, as though in you were the lovely
justification of these generations of welding together alien and native
to make a national t