By and by she lifted her head, looked long over the fields which lay, the shimmer of heat pulsing over their greenness, and then she turned, courage and decision in her dark eyes, though the tears still clung to her long lashes. "You have shown me your heart, and I--I am not the one to look into its secrets. It's spring-tide there," she hastened on with poetic simile--did she not keep to some such fashion she could not speak--"and there are blue skies, and bird songs and flowers--" "The rose of love," said Lawson softly. Frances drew her breath sobbingly, "'Tis not the time of roses," she said. "It is youth, and life, and ambition--" "And love!" "No!" "And love, _and you_!" "Not me! I am as much out of your life as she who is dead." "You are not; you are here; you are mine, Frances!" with his old masterful manner. "I am not!" "No one shall claim you!" "Because," she said gently, "I am already claimed!" "It is impossible!" he cried, never willing to own any other victor where he fought. "Why?" "I will not believe it!" "You must! It is true!" she put out a shielding hand, "and I think, _I know_, it is best! I did not know it then, I do not know how I know it now, but sorrow teaches much." "Sorrow and you, Frances! But you shall never know it again." He owned no defeat; it was his to make her happy. "Did you think you alone had suffered?" she asked, a little bitterly. "I learned many things in those long days. I learned the meaning of much that had been but empty words. I learned," she went on lower, so low he could scarcely catch the words, "much of myself. We would not be happy, you and I together. No! I listened to you. Listen now! It must be truth!" her sentences were broken. "I am selfish; it may be the fault of one who has known so little divided affection." "Divided! You know I should--" began Lawson passionately. "And yours will always be so, on the surface; in your heart you may be true. There is many a woman might trust you so, always; but I must see that I have all a man's heart or none. I told you my weakness once before." Even as she spoke, simply baring truths she had learned, as she said, from sorrow, she was wonder-struck that she could find words for them, deep as she had hidden them always in her heart. "I remember!" said Lawson, as he bared his head. "I would never have all of yours--ah! I know! Never!" "I would always love you, always! Can you not see," indignantly, "how a man can adore one woman and yet not be blind to all others?" "No!" with hot energy, "I would not share my love with every pretty face and every new ambition." Lawson was too angry at the moment for speech, but Frances did not heed it. "No! By and by when your life would be full and happy, and you would hail each new phase with eagerness, I, if I were by your side, would be growing colder and less attractive in my iciness, and we should be--Oh no!" with a dramatic gesture, "it is better so!"