d Alice.

"They will cease to be bitter dreams if your head be upon my
shoulder. You will cease to reproach yourself when you know that you
have made me happy."

"I shall never cease to reproach myself. I have done that which no
woman can do and honour herself afterwards. I have been--a jilt."

"The noblest jilt that ever yet halted between two minds! There has
been no touch of selfishness in your fickleness. I think I could be
hard enough upon a woman who had left me for greater wealth, for a
higher rank,--who had left me even that she might be gay and merry.
It has not been so with you."

"Yes, it has. I thought you were too firm in your own will, and--"

"And you think so still. Is that it?"

"It does not matter what I think now. I am a fallen creature, and
have no longer a right to such thoughts. It will be better for us
both that you should leave me,--and forget me. There are things
which, if a woman does them, should never be forgotten;--which she
should never permit herself to forget."

"And am I to be punished, then, because of your fault? Is that your
sense of justice?" He got up, and standing before her, looked down
upon her. "Alice, if you will tell me that you do not love me, I will
believe you, and will trouble you no more. I know that you will say
nothing to me that is false. Through it all you have spoken no word
of falsehood. If you love me, after what has passed, I have a right
to demand your hand. My happiness requires it, and I have a right
to expect your compliance. I do demand it. If you love me, Alice, I
tell you that you dare not refuse me. If you do so, you will fail
hereafter to reconcile it to your conscience before God."

Then he stopped his speech, and waited for a reply; but Alice sat
silent beneath his gaze, with her eyes turned upon the tombstones
beneath her feet. Of course she had no choice but to yield. He,
possessed of power and force infinitely greater than hers, had left
her no alternative but to be happy. But there still clung to her what
I fear we must call a perverseness of obstinacy, a desire to maintain
the resolution she had made,--a wish that she might be allowed to
undergo the punishment she had deserved. She was as a prisoner who
would fain cling to his prison after pardon has reached him, because
he is conscious that the pardon is undeserved. And it may be that
there was still left within her bosom some remnant of that feeling of
rebellion which his masterful spir