"I did not think you really loved me then," she said. "I thought it was just a passing fancy." "You see it was not, dear. All these months that I have worked hard, it was partly from the love of art and with the hope that I might be a really great artist, but at the bottom of it all along has been the thought of you and the determination that in one respect I would become worthy of you." "Don't talk like that, Cuthbert. I know now that I was a headstrong, conceited girl, thinking I was strong when I was as weak as water. You were right when you said I was not yet a woman, for I had never found that I had a heart. It is I who am unworthy." "Well, it is no question of worthiness now. The question is do you love me as I love you." "Are you sure you do, Cuthbert? I have thought all these months that you had taken me at my word, and that it was but as a friend you regarded me. Are you sure it is not gratitude for what little I did for you in the hospital! Still more that it is not because I showed my feelings so plainly the day before yesterday, and that it is from pity as well as gratitude that you speak now." "Then you were really a little jealous, Mary?" "You know I was. It was shameful of me to show it, so shameful that I have hated myself since. I know that after doing so, I ought to say no--no a thousand times. I love you, Cuthbert, I love you; but I would rather never marry you than feel it was out of pity that you took me. That would be too hard to bear." They were both standing now. "You are talking nonsense, child," he said, tenderly, as he took her hand. "You know I love you truly. Surely my pictures must have told you that. Honestly now, did you not feel that it was so?" "I did not know you loved me then, Cuthbert. There were other things, you know, that made me feel it could not be so, but then that for the first time I really knew----" and she stopped. "That you loved me, darling?" and he drew her closer to him. "Now, you gave me a straightforward answer before--I insist on as straightforward a one now." And this time the answer was not, No. "Mind," he said a few minutes afterwards, "your vocation is definitely fixed at last, Mary, and there must be no more changing." "As if you did not know there won't be," she said, saucily. And then suddenly altering her tone she went on, "Now, Cuthbert, you will surely tell me what you would not before. What did you find out? It is something about my father, I am sure."