They had come to a shaded walk across a little bridge, and by a common impulse they lingered a little here. While she waited, a sudden vision came before her eyes--and her heart, which had been in a tumult at his first words, grew calm and cold. She saw, not the impassioned, tender man on the bridge, speaking in low, musical tones of love and devotion and his need of her; but the strong, self-sufficient, young chairman in his office of the Municipal League--the man who had seemed to her to have the least comprehension of the complex modern woman of anyone she had ever met. "No, no," she said, drawing away from hm. "You do not know what you are saying. It cannot be." "I know that our lives can never be complete while they run apart," he answered from the depths of his emotion. "I know that you need me as much as I need you--and because we are meant for each other: because God made us for each other." "You do not know what you are saying," she replied, moving on briskly in the direction of home. "You happen to be drawn towards me now--by force of propinquity, perhaps; or because you were good enough to worry about me during my exile--" "As though I could help it," he cried; "O, God, those days and nights of uncertainty!" "But when you go home and think this over, you will thank me," she went on. "We are not fitted for each other. We are not meant for each other. I am what you call an advanced woman--your women-folks go farther and call me strong-minded. I have been brought up that way, and all my associations in life have developed that spirit within me. You have always looked upon women as inferior beings--Oh, yes, you have. You, too, were brought up that way. Even now you would tell me I am an exceptional woman--if I let you." "You are," interrupted Allingham. "By Heaven, you are." "But if I were to marry you," she pursued, still talking to the young man she had seen that morning a year ago in the Municipal League rooms, "you would soon resent my attitude towards life; you would want to restrict my life, to surround me with invisible limitations, such as you believe all femininity should be hedged with. I couldn't endure it. I never had to, and I couldn't submit to being estimated every day and in the intimacy of home life--according to the old-fashioned standards that narrow a woman's heart and mind until they hold nothing but pettiness and smallness and meanness of spirit. Because I couldn't, I should make you the most unhappy of men." "But, Gertrude, hear me," he pleaded. "The past year has been a revelation. You have been a revelation to me." "Yes, I," she retorted. "Not the eternal principles of manhood and womanhood, walking together--different and yet alike--only I--" "I swear to you," he cried, "I have come to see that a woman may be all womanly and yet be as much a power and a worker in the world as her husband; that her place is where she can be of the greatest help to humanity."