to conquer, not to be conquered—  to sway, not
to be ruled.

"I thought," he said, in a low tone, "you
would have come, because—I— did not know
you would allow me the happiness of coming
here."

"Did you not? I think you don't understand
me yet. I wished to see you, you know, and I
did not wish to go out this evening. It is quite
simple, is it not?"

"It is indeed, for such a woman as you."

She laughed. " Is not that rather an awkward
speech—rather an equivocal compliment?
How posed you look!" She laughed again.
Routh felt unspeakably embarrassed; he had a
sense of being at a disadvantage, which was
unpleasant. She saw it, and said:

"What a temper you have! You'd be rather
hard to please, I fancy, if one were in any sense
bound to try.".

"Don't jest with me," said Routh, suddenly
and sternly, and he rolled his chair deliberately
near her as he spoke. "You did not allow me,
you did not invite me to come here to-night;
you did not do this, which seems so 'simple' to
you, because you are as much braver than
every other woman, as you are more beautiful"
—he looked into her dark eyes, and their lids did
not droop—"only to jest with me, only to
trifle with me, as you trifle with others. You
are a wonderfully puzzling woman, I acknowledge;
no woman ever so puzzled me before.
Each time I see you, there is something
different, something new in your manner, and
each time it is as though I had to begin all
over again; as if I had not told you that I love
you, as if you had not listened and confessed
that you know it. Why have you sent for me?
You dismissed me yesterday with something
which you tried to make look and sound like
anger — ineffectually, for you were not angry.
And I was prepared for the same line of tactics
to-day. Well, you send for me. I am here.
You come to me a thousand times more beautiful"
—he dropped his voice to a whisper, and
she grew pale under the fixed fire of his eyes—
"infinitely more beautiful than I have ever
you; and in your eyes and in your smile
there is what I have never seen in them; and
yet you meet me with mere jesting words. Now,
this you do not mean; what is it that you
do mean?"

He rose, and leaned against the mantelpiece,
looking down upon her bent head, with the
light shining on the jewels in her hair. She did
not speak.

"What is it that you do mean?" he
repeated. She had laid one arm along the
cushioned side of the sofa, the side near him.
He clasped it, above the wrist, impressively, not
caressingly, and at the touch, the words he had
spoken to her before, "Would you not be
afraid of a man who loved you with all the
passion of his heart?" recurred to her, and she
felt that so this man loved her, and that she
was afraid of him.

"I dare say many others have loved you, and
told you so," he continued, "and I don't ask
you how you received their professions. I
know the world too well, and what it brings to
men and women, for any such folly. That is of
the past. The present is ours. I ask you why
you nave brought me here? A woman who
resents such words as those I have spoken to you
before now, does not give a man the chance of
repeating them. You have not sent for me to
tell me that you are insulted and outraged, to
talk the cant of a hypocritical society to me.
I should not love you, beautiful as you are,
if you were such a fool." He saw that his
audacity was not without its charm for her;
her head was raised now, and her dark eyes,
looking up, met his looking down, as she
listened, with parted lips and deep-drawn
breath.

"Be sure of this," he said, " no man has ever
loved you as I love you, or been willing to stake
so much upon your love." The sinister truth
which lurked in these words lent the sinister
expression to his face again for a moment
which she had sometimes seen in it. "How
much I stake upon it you will never know. So
be it. I am ready, I am willing. You see I
am giving you time. I am not hurrying you
into rash speech. I dare say you were not at
all prepared for this when you and I met, and
you took the initiative in what you intended to
be an ordinary watering-place flirtation—while
you were waiting for Arthur Felton, perhaps?"
he said, savagely, for, as he went on, the savage
nature of the man was rising within him, and
for all that his grasp was on her soft white arm,
and his gaze was searching the depths of her
dark eyes, he was speaking rather to himself
than to her; rather to the unchained devil
within, than to the beautiful fatality before
him.

"It is possible you had some such notion,"
he said. "I don't ask you to acknowledge it,
for if so, you have abandoned it." He stooped
lower, his eyes looked closer into hers. She
shrank back, and covered her face with her
disengaged hand. " Yes," he went on, in a
gentler tone, "I know you soon discovered
that I am not made for make-believes; and
now — now that you have sent for me, and I am
here, what is it that you mean? You cannot make
me the pastime of an hour; you cannot shake
off the hold which such love as mine lays upon
your life — would still lay upon it were you a
feebler woman than you are. What then? Are
you going to take the wine of life, or are you
going to content yourself with the vapid
draughts you have hitherto drank? You must
tell me, and tell me to-night, what it is you
mean; for a crisis in my life has come, and I
must know, without paltering or delay, how it is
to be dealt with."

He lifted his hand from her arm, and, standing
directly before her, bade her look up and
speak to him. She did not move. Then he sat
down on a velvet footstool before her sofa, and
drew her hands away from before her face.
There were signs of agitation on it, and he read