have work, you see, or I'd lose my self-respect--it's all
I've got--I'd kill myself." She spoke as calmly as though she were
reviewing the situation objectively. "And then, I've thought that
you might come to believe you really wanted to marry me--you wouldn't
realize what you were doing, or what might happen if we were married.
I've tried to tell you that, too, only you didn't seem to understand
what I was saying. My father's only a gatekeeper, we're poor--poorer
than some of the operatives in the mill, and the people you know here in
Hampton wouldn't understand. Perhaps you think you wouldn't care, but--"
she spoke with more effort, "there are your children. When I've thought
of them, it all seems impossible. I'd make you unhappy--I couldn't bear
it, I wouldn't stay with you. You see, I ought to have gone away long
ago."

Believing, as he did, that marriage was the goal of all women, even of
the best, the immediate capitulation he had expected would have made
matters far less difficult. But these scruples of hers, so startlingly
his own, her disquieting insight into his entire mental process had a
momentary checking effect, summoned up the vague presage of a future
that might become extremely troublesome and complicated. His very
reluctance to discuss with her the problem she had raised warned him
that he had been swept into deep waters. On the other hand, her splendid
resistance appealed to him, enhanced her value. And accustomed as he had
been to a lifelong self-gratification, the thought of being balked in
this supreme desire was not to be borne. Such were the shades of his
feeling as he listened to her.

"That's nonsense!" he exclaimed, when she had finished. "You're a
lady--I know all about your family, I remember hearing about it when
your father came here--it's as good as any in New England. What do you
suppose I care, Janet? We love each other--I've got to have you. We'll
be married in the spring, when the rush is over."

He drew her to him once more, and suddenly, in the ardour of that
embrace, he felt her tenseness suddenly relax--as though, against her
will--and her passion, as she gave her lips, vied with his own. Her
lithe body trembled convulsively, her cheeks were wet as she clung to
him and hid her face in his shoulder. His sensations in the presence of
this thing he had summoned up in her were incomprehensible, surpassing
any he had ever known. It was no longer a woman he held in his arms,
the woma