said. "You know that, ... don't
you?"

"I know that we love ... and that we dare not ignore it."

She suffered his arm about her, his eyes looking deeply into hers--a
close, sweet caress, a union of lips, and her dimmed eyes' response.

"Stephen," she faltered, "how can you make it so hard for me? How can
you force me to this shame!"

"Shame?" he repeated vaguely.

"Yes--this treachery to myself--when I cannot hope to be more to
you--when I dare not love you too much!"

"You must dare, Sylvia!"

"No, no, no! I know myself, I tell you. I cannot give up what is
offered--for you!--dearly, dearly as I do love you!" She turned and
caught his hands in hers, flushed, trembling, unstrung. "I cannot--I
simply cannot! How can you love me and listen to such wickedness?
How can you still care for such a girl as I am--worse than mercenary,
because I have a heart--or had, until you took it! Keep it; it is the
only part of me not all ignoble."

"I will keep it--in trust," he said, "until you give yourself with it."

But she only shook her head wearily, withdrawing her hands from his, and
for a time they sat silent, eyes apart.

Then--"There is another reason," she said wistfully.

He looked up at her, hesitated, and--"My habits?" he asked simply.

"Yes."

"I have them in check."

"Are you--certain?"

"I think I may be--now."

"Yet," she said timidly, "you lost one fight--since you knew me."

The dull red mantling his face wrung her heart. She turned impulsively
and laid both hands on his shoulders. "That chance I would take, with
all its uncertainty, all the dread inheritance you have come into. I
love you enough for that; and if it turned out that--that you could not
stem the tide, even with me to face it with you; and if the pity of it,
the grief of it, killed me, I would take that chance--if you loved me
through it all. ... But there is something else. Hush; let me have my say
while I find the words--something else you do not understand. ... Turn
your face a little; please don't look at me. This is what you do not
know--that, in three generations, every woman of my race has--gone
wrong. ... Every one! and I am beginning--with such a marriage! ...
deliberately, selfishly, shamelessly, perfectly conscious of the
frivolous, erratic blood in me, aware of the race record behind me.

"Once, when I knew nothing--before I--I met you--I believed such a
marriage would not only permit me mental tranquillity, but safely