“My generosity,” echoed Raine, with effective interruption. “My longing, my needs, the happiness of my life! If you care for me, it is not torturing you to tell you I love you--I can't live a man's life without you. When I first read your letter, it crushed the soul out of me. I did not understand; afterwards I did. Some day you shall learn how. I love you, Katherine, need you, yearn for you.” His passion grew as he looked at her, watching the faint colour come and go on the face beneath the veil. She seemed too fragile and delicate for the rude buffetings of the world. An immense wave of emotion swept through him. It was his indefeasible right to protect her, cherish her, hold her in his arms, close to him. And Katherine was trembling, every chord in her vibrated. She could not speak. She flashed on him a quick, sidelong, feminine glance, and met his eyes fixed upon her. They were blue and strong, half-fierce, half-tender. The man's will and longing were in them. She shrank, and yet she looked again, loving him for their intensity. Raine spoke on as he had never known it had been in his power to speak. The old peasant dozed, regardless of their presence or of that of a little dusty child who squatted down by him to play with the dog. Through the trees and shrubs in front could be seen glimpses of white dresses, scraps of the passers-by on the path along the quay. But this quiet, somewhat unkempt corner remained undisturbed. “I can't, I can't,” said Katherine, at last. “I have pledged myself--I can't go back.” “I will settle that matter,” he replied, with a half smile. “Leave it to me. Men understand one another. You are mine, Katherine, my darling, mine, my wife--if you love me.” The tenderness of his voice thrilled through her. She raised her eyes to his, this time to be held there. “Love you!” He read her lips rather than heard them. “And nothing again shall part us? You will marry me, Katherine?” All the woman in her cried “yes,” but it also held her back. “Will you love me in after years as now, Raine? Will you never come to think that this shame that has come to me was deserved? Think of it, dear, in your clear, honest way. You will never come to feel that you have given all your wealth for what, like most men, you should have trodden under foot? Your life's happiness--mine--depend upon your answering it from your heart of hearts, dear. Judge me now for ever and ever.” “As God hears me,” said Raine, with the love in his voice. “To me you are ever the purest and the noblest and tenderest of women. You love me with a woman's love and I with a man's; and we will love soul to soul, dear, till we die. Our love, dear, is as sacred to me as the ghost I buried in it a few weeks ago. All this will be like a troubled dream--all the past, darling, in both our lives as shadows. Thank God!”