bove them--all
the magic of the young year and of young love made the delicious story
Roland had been longing to tell and the innocent heart of Denas
fearing and longing to hear very easy to interpret--very easy to
understand.

Listening, and then refusing to listen; yielding a little, and then
drawing back again, Denas nevertheless heard Roland's whole sweet
confession. She was taught to believe that he had loved her from their
first meeting; taught to believe and half-made to acknowledge that she
had not been indifferent to him. She was under almost irresistible
influences, and she did not think of others which might have
counteracted them. Even Elizabeth's revelation to her of her own
splendid matrimonial hopes was favourable to Roland's arguments; for
if it was a thing for congratulating and rejoicing that Elizabeth
should marry a man so much richer than herself, where was it wrong for
Denas to love one supposed to be socially and financially her
superior?

Before they were half-way to the shingle Roland felt that he had won.
The conviction gave him a new kind of power--the power all women
delight to acknowledge; the sweet dictation, the loving tyranny that
claims every thought of the beloved. Roland told Denas she must not
dare to remember anyone but him; he would feel it and know it if she
did. She promised this readily. She must not tell Elizabeth. Elizabeth
was unreasonable, she was even jealous of everything concerning her
brother; she would have a hundred objections; she would influence his
father unfavourably; she would do all she could to prevent their
seeing each other, etc., etc. And where a man pleads, one woman is
readily persuaded against another. But Denas was much harder to
persuade where the article of secrecy touched her father and mother.
Her conscience, uneasy for some time, told her positively at this
point that deception was wicked and dangerous. Roland could not win
from her a promise in this direction. But he was not afraid--he was
sure he could trust to her love and her desire to please him.

One of the cruellest things about a wrong love is that it delights in
tangles and hidden ways; that it teaches and practises deceit from its
first inception; that its earliest efforts are toward destroying all
older and more sacred attachments. Roland was not willing to take the
hand of Denas in the face of the world and say: "This is my beloved
wife." Yet for the secret pleasure of his secret love,