ight, to the left, as if in search of some rescuer, some one.

"But what does a woman like you know of love, after all--real love?" he
went on, with angry scorn. "As a general thing, the better she is, the
less she knows. And I have never denied that you were good, Margaret."

She moved to pass him.

"Not yet. You have reasoned the whole case out too well, there was
rather too much reason; a lawyer couldn't have done it better."

"I have had time to think of the reasons. How often each day do you
suppose I have gone over everything--over and over? And how many days
have there been in these long years?"

"It isn't the time. It's your nature."

"Very well. It's my nature."

"But you needn't suppose that your having that nature will stop me," he
said, with a certain violence of tone roused by her agreement with these
accusations. "You have confessed to some sort of liking for me, I shall
take advantage of it as far as it goes (not far, I fear); I shall make
it serve as the foundation of all I shall constantly attempt to do."

Her arms dropped by her sides. "Constantly? I believe there is nothing
in the world so cruel as a man when he pretends to care for you." She
moved off a step or two. "I do not love you, you say? I adore you. From
almost the first day I saw you--yes, even from then. It is the one love
of my life, and remember I am not a girl, it's a woman who tells you
this--to her misery. And it is everything about you that I love--that
makes it harder; not only what you say and how you say it, what you
think and do, but what you _are_--oh! what you are in everything. The
way you look at me, the tone of your voice, the turn of your head, your
eyes, your hands--I love them, I love them all. I suffer every moment,
it has been so for years. I am so miserable away from you, so desperate
and lonely! And yet when I am with you, that is harder. Whichever way I
turn, there is nothing but pain, it is so torturing that I wonder how I
can have lived! Yet would I give it up? Never."

The splendor of her eyes, as she poured forth these words, her rapt
expression, the slight figure, erect and tense--he could no more have
dared to touch her then than he could have touched a shining seraph that
had lighted for an instant in his path.

Her eyes suddenly changed. "When I have hurt you," she went on, "it has
been _so_ hard to do it--so hard!" She was the woman now; a mist had
suffused the blue.

He came towards her, he sank