With a thickly-beating heart, nervous and eager as though he were a boy of sixteen seeking his first love-tryst, he enters the small library far before the hour, and waits for her there, pacing to and fro the floor. The room is full of memories of her: here they have talked on rainy days and have strolled out on to the lawns on fine ones; there is the chair which she likes best, and there the volume she had taken down yesterday; could it be only ten days since standing here he had seen her first in the distance with the children? Only ten days! It seems to him ten years, ten centuries. The morning is very still, a fine soft rain is falling, wet jessamine-flowers tap against the panes of the closed windows, a great apprehension seems to make his very heart stand still. As the clock points to the hour she enters the room. She is very pale, and wears a morning gown of white plush, which trails behind her in a silver shadow. He kisses her hands passionately, but she draws them away. "Wait a little," she says, gently. "Wait till you know--whatever there is to know." "I want to know but one thing." She smiles a little sadly. "Oh, you think so now because you are in love with me. But in time to come, when that is passed, you will not be so easily content. If"--she hesitates a moment--"if there is to be any community between our lives, you must be quite satisfied as to my past. It is your right to be so satisfied; and were you not so, some time or other we should both be wretched." His eyes flash with joy. "Then----" he begins breathlessly. "Oh! how like a man that is!" she says, sadly. "To think but of the one thing, of the one present moment, and to be ready to give all the future in pawn for it! Wait to hear everything. And first of all I must tell you that Lord Gervase also last night asked me to marry him." "And you!" "I shall not marry Lord Gervase. But I will not disguise from you that once I would have done so gladly, had I been free to do it." Brandolin is silent: he changes color. "I bade him come here for my answer," she continues. "He will be here in a few minutes. I wish you to remain in the large library, so that you may hear all that I say to him." "I cannot do that. I cannot play the part of eavesdropper." "You will play that part, or any other that I ask you, if you love me," she says, with a touch of imperiousness. "Do you not see," she goes on, with more gentleness, "that if our lives are to be passed near each other (I do not say that they are, but you seem to wish it), you must first of all be convinced of the truth of all I tell you? If one doubt, one suspicion, remain, you will, in time, become unable to banish it. It would grow and grow until you were mastered by it. You believe in what I tell you now; but how long would you believe after marriage?" "I want no proof: I only want your word. Nay, I do not even want that. I will ask you nothing. I swear that I will never ask you anything."