Under the lower pavilion, the band was playing a Hungarian rhapsody, and the crowd had packed itself close to listen. Merrington followed Jacqueline slowly through the current moving in the middle. She stopped so abruptly that he pressed upon her, and steadied himself by a touch upon her arm. “Why should we go on?” she asked, facing him. “Dick is joined to his idols, let him alone. Shall we walk back where we may be quiet? Or do you care for the crowd?” He did not heed her last question, so rapturous was the music of her other. He led her through the slowly moving impact of people, impatient until he might get her beyond and to himself. Neither said very much until they were where the crowd ceased to make itself felt, and the night reclaimed its darkness from the glare of the many electric lights of the gala part of the town. He was madly palpitant under the almost somber calm which he preserved outwardly. His passion, like a fever long incubating, leaped suddenly into full force by no conscious volition of his own. That evening, with Jacqueline in her home, the spell of the woman with the halo of domesticity around her had swept his love into an ardent desire--the desire of the man to have the woman he loves in a home of his own. And now he was with her alone under the throbbing stars, and something other than her former intolerance of him was keeping Jacqueline wordless. He knew that it was something very different, knew it by the instinct of the lover, and his heart bounded at her silence. When he spoke, Jacqueline shivered at the ground-roll of emotion which his words seemed to break into a momentary surge. “I am very glad that Brinton came today.” She nodded, acquiescent. She had meant to speak, but the words stuck. “When the avalanche is ready,” he murmured, “or the sea is at the flood, a touch of nature’s breath--and the thing is done.” “How prosaically you drop your figures,” she said, with a nervous laugh. “What are you trying to say?” “Jacqueline!” She started away from him, her face, very white, turned to his. “Do I frighten you?” “Yes,” she whispered, her eyes held by his penetrating gaze. Merrington smiled. “And yet,” he said, so low that the words seemed to her almost as breathing in her ears, “I would give every drop of blood, every fiber in my body, to make you happy, for I love you with every drop of my blood.” “Mr. Merrington----” she began, but he cut her short. “Listen to me,” he said, guiding her into the little balcony that projected from the walk just where they were, and overhung the beach. “No man, since man and woman were made for each other, has wanted a woman more than I want you. Every bit of myself, body and soul, soul and body, I offer you, Jacqueline, in return for your love.” “I have no love for you,” she breathed, slowly. “You must have. Such love as I have for you compels love in return.” She looked away, struggling with herself. At last her words came, strained and muffled.