"There is this to be said, then. I will promise to answer you this day twelve-month." "Twelve months," says he, with consternation; his grasp on her hands loosens. "If the prospect frightens or displeases you, there is nothing more to be said," rejoins she coldly. It is she who is calm and composed, he is nervous and anxious. "But a whole year!" "That is nothing," says she, releasing her hands, with a little determined show of strength, from his. "It is for you to decide. I don't care!" Perhaps she hardly grasps the cruelty that lies in this half-impatient speech, until she sees Dysart's face flush painfully. "You need not have said that," says he. "I know it. I am nothing to you really." He pauses, and then says again in a low tone, "Nothing." "Oh, you mustn't feel so much!" cries she, as if tortured. "It is folly to feel at all in this world. What's the good of it. And to feel about me, I am not worth it. If you would only bear that in mind, it might help you." "If I bore that in mind I should not want to make you my wife!" returns he steadily, gravely. "Think as you will yourself, you do not shake my faith in you. Well," with a deep breath, "I accept your terms. For a year I shall feel myself bound to you (though that is a farce, for I shall always be bound to you, soul and body) while you shall hold yourself free, and try to----" "No, no. We must both be equal--both free, while I--" she stops short, coloring warmly, and laughing, "what is it I am to try to do?" "To love me!" replies he, with infinite sadness in look and tone. "Yes," says Joyce slowly, and then again meditatively, "yes." She lifts her eyes presently and regards him strangely. "And if all my trying should not succeed? If I never learn to love you?" "Why, then it is all over. This hope of mine is at an end," say he, so calmly, yet with such deep melancholy, such sad foreboding, that her heart is touched. "Oh! it is a hope of mine too," says she quickly. "If it were not would I listen to you to-day? But you must not be so downhearted; let the worst come to the worst, you will be as well off as you are at this instant." He shakes his head. "Does hope count for nothing, then?" "You would compel me to love you," says she, growing the more vexed as she grows the more sorry for him. "Would you have me marry you even if I did not love you?" Her soft eyes have filled with tears, there is a suspicion of reproach in her voice. "No. I suppose not." He half turns away from her. At this moment a sense of despair falls on him. She will never care for him, never, never. This proposed probation is but a mournful farce, a sorry clinging to a hope that is built on sand. When in the future she marries, as so surely she will, he will not be her husband. Why not give in at once? Why fight with the impossible? Why not break all links (frail as they are sweet), and let her go her way, and he his, while yet there is time? To falter is to court destruction.