d I had to give in."

"That was very sensible of you," she declared knocking the ash from her
cigarette. "There is no use wearing oneself out fighting a hopeless
battle. You know now that there are things in life which are not to be
found in your passionless corner among the hills. You have realized that
you owe a duty to yourself."

"That was not what brought me," he answered bluntly. "I came for you."

Louise's capacity for fencing seemed suddenly enfeebled. A frontal
attack of such directness was irresistible.

"For me!" she repeated weakly.

"Of course," he replied. "None of your arguments would have brought me
here. If I have desired to understand this world at all, it is because
it is your world. It is you I want--don't you understand that? I thought
you would know it from the first moment you saw me!"

He was suddenly on his feet, leaning over her, a changed man, masterful,
passionate. She opened her lips, but said nothing. She felt herself
lifted up, clasped for a moment in his arms. Unresisting, she felt the
fire of his kisses. The world seemed to have stopped. Then she tried to
push him away, weakly, and against her own will. At her first movement
he laid her tenderly back in her place.

"I am sorry!" he said. "And yet I am not," he added, drawing his chair
close up to her side. "I am glad! You knew that I loved you, Louise. You
knew that it was for you I had come."

She was beginning to collect herself. Her brain was at work again; but
she was conscious of a new confusion in her senses, a new element in her
life. She was no longer sure of herself.

"Listen," she begged earnestly. "Be reasonable! How could I marry you?
Do you think that I could live with you up there in the hills?"

"We will live," he promised, "anywhere you choose in the world."

"Ah, no!" she continued, patting his hand. "You know what your life is,
the things you want in life. You don't know mine yet. There is my work.
You cannot think how wonderful it is to me. You don't know the things
that fill my brain from day to day, the thoughts that direct my life. I
cannot marry you just because--because--"

"Because what?" he interrupted eagerly.

"Because you make me feel--something I don't understand, because you
come and you turn the world, for a few minutes, topsyturvy. But that is
all foolishness, isn't it? Life isn't built up of emotions. What I want
you to understand, and what you, please, must understand, is that at
present