"Thank you--you are as generous as you are gentlemanly. Granted that I did not require much temptation, you placed what little I did want before me. Do you not see," she cried, with sudden passion, "that you have spoiled my life? It would be bright, hopeful, full of charm, but for _you_--you have marred and blighted it. I do not like you--I never did. The very way in which you won me was hateful to me; your love was all self. I never liked you. And now, when I could be happy--ah, Heaven, so unutterably happy--you come like a black shadow and rob my life of every bit of happiness that it contains. No wonder that I loathe you!" "No," he said, gently, "it is not." "Then why do you not be kind to me, and let me be quite free?" she asked, emboldened by the softening of his voice. "You have guessed the reason," he replied. "You have said--it is because I am selfish to my heart's core. I sacrificed you once to my selfish love; is it likely that I should hesitate a second time?" "You might well hesitate, because I suffered so keenly over the first." The red flush deepened on his face, a strange light came into his eyes. "I will not let you go free, neither will I cease from my endeavors to make you my wife; and the reason is because I love you. Oh, proud, fair, lovely woman! I love you with the very madness of love, with a desperation of the fiercest passion with a love that is my doom and yours. You have heard of men made desperate through love: look at me, you will see it. I will kill you if you attempt to leave me--if you attempt to give the love that ought to be mine to another man!" "Thank you for the threat," she said. "You drive me to threats, you give me no other recourse. I would fain be all that is kind and good to you; I would worship you; I would lay all that I have at your feet, only begging of you to take it. What would I not do to prove how dearly I love you." "It is all self. We will have the plainest possible understanding. If there be any manhood in you, it shall be shamed. You shall have it in plain words. You quite understand that if ever I should marry you, it would be because by threats you had compelled me to do so; that I should hate and detest you if I became your wife even more than I hate and detest you now. As the days passed on, my loathing would become greater, so that no friendly word would ever pass between us, and I should consider you simply as a tyrant who bound me in chains. You understand all this?" "I will risk it," he replied. "I should not despair of regaining your love in time." The face she turned to him was pallid in its despair. "You never would regain it," she said, calmly. "Yet there is one way in which even now you might gain my liking, my esteem, my sincere friendship." His face kindled at the words. "How, Dora? Tell me how!" he cried, eagerly.