d suffocate with the happiness of it. It seemed so
gloriously trustful of you . . . though, I must admit that idea did not
come at first. You see I'm only a man; and you're a lovely
girl. . . ." He laughed a little shortly. "I'd made up my mind to
drift these next two or three days, and then when you came it seemed to
be a direct answer to the problem. I didn't realise just to begin with
that you weren't quite capable of thinking things out for
yourself. . . . I didn't care, either. It was you and I--a woman and
a man; it was the answer. And then you started to cry--in my arms.
The strain had been too much. Gradually as you cried and clung to me,
all the tearing overmastering passion went--and just a much bigger love
for you came instead of it. . . . You see, it seemed to me that you,
in your weakness last night, had placed the settlement on my
shoulders. . . ."

"It's there now, dear man," she whispered. "I'd just got tired, tired,
tired of fighting---- And last night it all seemed so clear." With
her breast rising and falling quickly she stared over the hills, and
Vane watched her with eyes full of love.

"I know it did--last night," he answered.

"Don't you understand," she went on after a moment, "that a woman wants
to have her mind made up for her? She doesn't want arguments and
points of view--she wants to be taken into a man's arms, and kissed,
and beaten if necessary. . . . I don't know what was the matter with
me last night; I only know that I was lying in bed feeling all dazed
and bruised--and then suddenly I saw the way out. To come to you--and
get things settled." She turned on him and her face was very tense.
"You weren't--you weren't shocked," her voice was very low. "Not
disgusted with me."

Vane threw back his head and laughed. "My lady," he said after a
moment, "forgive my laughing. But if you could even, in your wildest
dreams, imagine the absurdity of such an idea, you'd laugh too. . . ."
Then he grew serious again, and stabbed at the ground with the point of
his stick. "Do you suppose, dear, that I wouldn't sooner have taken
that way out myself? Do you suppose that the temptation to take that
way out isn't beating and hammering at me now? . . . That's why I've
got to go. . . ."

"What do you mean?" Her face was half-averted.

"I mean," he answered grimly, "that if I stopped at Melton to-night, I
should come to your room. As I think I said before, I'm just a man,
and y