nd marsh?

A drift of fragrance was afloat on the air. A delicate stir of movement
passed by me. I raised my head from my hands, expectant.

"I am here," her familiar voice told me.

"Desire, you had to come, tonight."

Some quality in my voice carried to her a message beyond the words. But
she did not break into exclamation or question as another woman might.
She was mute, as one who stands still to find the path before taking a
step.

"You are angry," she said at last. "Something here has gone badly for
you; I knew that before I entered this room."

"How can you say that?" I challenged. "If you are like other men and
women, how can you know what happens when you are absent? How do you
know what passes between the Thing from the Frontier and me?"

"I do not know unless you tell me, Roger. If I feel from afar when you
are in sorrow, why, so do many people feel with another in sympathy."

"You feel more than ordinary sympathy can," I retorted.

"Then, perhaps it is not an ordinary sympathy I have for you, Roger."

Her very gentleness struck wrong on my perverted mood. Was she trying to
turn me from my purpose with her soft speech? She had never granted me
anything so near an admission of love until now.

"It is not an ordinary trial that I have borne for these meagre meetings
where I do not see your face or touch your hand," I answered. "But that
must end. Put your hand in mine, Desire, and come with me. Let us go out
of this room where shadows make our thoughts sickly. You shall stay with
my cousin. Or if you choose, we will go straight to New York or Boston.
I am asking you to be my wife. Let us have done with phantoms and
spectres. I love you."

"No," she whispered. "You do not love me tonight. Tonight you distrust
me. Why?"

"Is it distrusting you to ask you to marry me?"

"Not this way would you have asked that of me when I last came! But I
will answer you more honestly than you do me. To go with you would be
the greatest happiness the world could give. To think of it dazzles the
heart. But it is not for me. Have you forgotten, Roger, that my life is
not mine? That I am a prisoner who has crept out for a little while? The
gates soon close, now, upon me."

"What gates?" I demanded.

"Sacrifice and expiation."

"Expiation of what?" I exclaimed, exasperated. "Desire, I have read the
book of Desire Michell, downstairs."

I heard her gasp and shrink in the darkness. Silence bound us both. In
the hu