hink I shall ever be able to forgive you?" She lifted
her head with an unexpectedness that was almost startling. Her
eyes were alight, burning with a ruddy fire out of the whiteness of
her face. She spoke as she had never spoken before. It was as if
some strange force had entered into and possessed her. "Do you
think I shall ever forget--even if you do? Perhaps I am not enough
to you now to count in that way. You think--perhaps--that a slave
is all you want, and that partnership, comradeship, friendship,
doesn't count. You are willing to sacrifice all that now, and to
sacrifice him with it. But how will it be--afterwards? Will a
slave be any comfort to you when things go wrong--as they surely
will? Will it satisfy you to feel that my body is yours when my
soul is so utterly out of sympathy, out of touch, that I shall be
in spirit a complete stranger to you? Ah yes," her voice rang on a
deep note of conviction that could not be restrained--"you think
you won't care. But you will--you will. A time will come when you
will feel you would gladly give everything you possess to undo what
you are doing to-day. You will be sick at heart, lonely,
disillusioned, suspicious of me and of everybody. You will see the
horrible emptiness of it all, and you will yearn for better things.
But it will be too late then. What once we fling away never comes
again to us. We shall be too far apart by that time, too
hopelessly estranged, ever to be more to each other than what we
are at this moment--master and slave. Through all our lives we
shall never be more than that."

She ceased to speak, and the fire went out of her eyes. She
drooped in his hold as if all her strength had gone from her.

He turned and put her steadily down into the chair again. He had
heard her out without a sign of emotion, and he betrayed none then.
He did not speak a word. But his silence said more to her than
speech. It was as the beginning of a silence which was to last
between them for as long as they lived.

She sank back exhausted with closed eyes. The struggle--that long,
fierce battle for Guy's soul--was over. And she had failed. Her
prayers had been in vain. All her desperate effort had been
fruitless, and nothing seemed to matter any more. She told herself
that she would never be able to pray again. Her faith had died in
the mortal combat. And there was nothing left to pray for. She
was tired to the very soul of her, tired unt