“I shall be glad to hear anything you want to tell,” he replied slowly. “But first, my dear girl, do you know you are the stars in the sky? Do you know you are a prize for sultans, for emperors, for decent people, for people infinitely better than I am? I’m a stopping place in your passage. Not that.... I’m as worthless as a man can very well be. I think, in short, something has made you a little mad.” “You’re _not_ worthless,” she replied vehemently. “I’m tired of hearing you say you are.... If all this means you don’t love me and don’t want me, there’s nothing more to be said. If it means that you think you are not good enough for me, that’s foolish. And in that case--there _is_--more to be said.” She trembled a little. Both were under the stress of a new and powerful feeling.... She wanted more than anything else in the world to take hold of him, to shake him, to keep on shaking him, because he had not been equal to asking of her what she had just now asked of him. She wanted to love him as nobody had ever loved him; to love him until he respected himself. It needed no more than a spur, something to make him so proud that he could scarcely believe in his happiness. She could do that for him, she was equal to it, because she did love him and she was beautiful and desirable. She thought of herself, in that instant, as Moira Seymour of Thornhill. But in the next she did not. It was so terribly hard to say what she had to tell him. Moira’s persistence in her reckless proposal had given rise to a tempest of forces in Miles Harlindew. The notion of marrying her had never even formed in his dispirited brain. Now it swept through him like a cleansing and strengthening hope. He faced her with the uncertainty of a man who is still afraid to trust his own understanding. “Wait, Miles!” she said, “I’ve something more to tell you.” She began hurriedly, like a guilty child, but as she went on her voice became firm. “I don’t know who my father was. I was told his name was Williams, but I don’t know whether he is alive or dead. I’m the child of a servant who was never married. You see if you married me, it might be said that I wanted the protection of your name. I’ve none of my own.” It was his turn to be impatient, and he had an impulse now to laugh and take her in his arms. But he held back. “Mary,” he said seriously, “in the first place what has all that to do with it?” “But it’s true. And you’ve forgotten my name is Moira.”