"All too easily—sometimes I think inevitably. I am not blind, Nora. I see how petty and small your life must be compared to what you perhaps thought—to what might have been. The people you meet are accustomed to it all—at least they have learnt to make the best of what little they have; but you have come from another world and another life. You are accustomed to breadth and light and freedom. You have never known this brilliant poverty which we know so well, and it is hard on you—too hard on you. I have never seen it all so clearly as I see it now. If I had seen it then I would have trampled my love for you underfoot rather than have asked so great a sacrifice. But I was blinded—I did not understand——" "Wolff, have I complained? Have I been so ungrateful—so wicked?" "No, Nora. You have been very brave and good, but I have seen, and I have reproached myself bitterly—terribly. When I came in to-night and saw that you had been crying, I felt that I would do anything—that I would give you up——" He stopped short, and with a pang of indescribable pain she felt that this soldier kneeling at her feet was fighting for his voice, that his quick, broken sentences had been the outburst of a long-suppressed and bitter struggle. "I love you, Nora," he stammered roughly. "I love you with my life and soul and body, but if your happiness required it I would give you up—to your people——" "Wolff!" she interrupted passionately. "Listen, dear. I am not talking at random. I have thought it all over. If I cannot make you happy, I will not make you unhappy. I will do everything a man can do to atone for the one great wrong. Only tell me, whilst I have the strength to part with you——" He stopped again, and she felt that he was trembling. There was something infinitely pathetic in his weakness, something which called to life not only her love for him as her husband but a wealth of a new and wonderful tenderness such as a mother might feel for a suffering child. She put her arms about him and drew his head against her breast. For that moment she forgot everything save that he was miserable and that she had made him so. "I will never leave you of my free will," she said. "Never! You will have to chase me away, and then I shall come and sit on the doorstep and wait for you to let me in. Oh, Wolff, my dearest, what foolish things have you been thinking, and how long have you been brooding over them? Don’t you know that I could not live without you?" He lifted his face, searching hers with keen, hungry eyes, in which she read doubt and a dawning hope. "Is that true, Nora?" "Yes; it is true!" "Be honest with me. Am I so much to you that you can be happy with me—with my people and in my home and country?"