at has come over you?"

"We ought to be continually sacrificing ourselves on the altar of
duty! But I have always striven to do what has pleased me. I well
deserved the scourging I have got! I wish something would take the
evil right out of me, and all my monstrous errors, and all my sinful
ways!"

"Sue--my own too suffering dear!--there's no evil woman in you. Your
natural instincts are perfectly healthy; not quite so impassioned,
perhaps, as I could wish; but good, and dear, and pure. And as I
have often said, you are absolutely the most ethereal, least sensual
woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness. Why do you
talk in such a changed way? We have not been selfish, except when no
one could profit by our being otherwise. You used to say that human
nature was noble and long-suffering, not vile and corrupt, and at
last I thought you spoke truly. And now you seem to take such a much
lower view!"

"I want a humble heart; and a chastened mind; and I have never had
them yet!"

"You have been fearless, both as a thinker and as a feeler, and you
deserved more admiration than I gave. I was too full of narrow
dogmas at that time to see it."

"Don't say that, Jude! I wish my every fearless word and thought
could be rooted out of my history. Self-renunciation--that's
everything! I cannot humiliate myself too much. I should like to
prick myself all over with pins and bleed out the badness that's in
me!"

"Hush!" he said, pressing her little face against his breast as if
she were an infant. "It is bereavement that has brought you to this!
Such remorse is not for you, my sensitive plant, but for the wicked
ones of the earth--who never feel it!"

"I ought not to stay like this," she murmured, when she had remained
in the position a long while.

"Why not?"

"It is indulgence."

"Still on the same tack! But is there anything better on earth than
that we should love one another?"

"Yes. It depends on the sort of love; and yours--ours--is the
wrong."

"I won't have it, Sue! Come, when do you wish our marriage to be
signed in a vestry?"

She paused, and looked up uneasily. "Never," she whispered.

Not knowing the whole of her meaning he took the objection serenely,
and said nothing. Several minutes elapsed, and he thought she had
fallen asleep; but he spoke softly, and found that she was wide awake
all the time. She sat upright and sighed.

"There is a strange, indescribable perfum