What do you say?” She looked all round, as if seeking escape from a mesh suddenly flung about her, and then she looked imploringly up at him. “I have nothing to say,” she whispered huskily. “I can’t answer you.” “Well, that’s all I ask,” he said, moving a few steps, away, and suffering her to rise. “Don’t answer me now. Take time,—all the time you want, all the time there is.” “No,” she said, rising, and gathering some strength from the sense of being on foot again. “I don’t mean that. I mean that I don’t—I can’t consent.” “You don’t believe in me? You don’t think I would do it?” “I don’t believe in myself. I have no right to doubt you. I know that I ought to honor you for what you propose.” “I don’t think it calls for any great honor. Of course I shouldn’t propose it to every lady physician.” He smiled with entire serenity and self-possession. “Tell me one thing: was there ever a time when you would have consented?” She did not answer. “Then you will consent yet?” “No. Don’t deceive yourself. I shall never consent.” “I’ll leave that to the logic of your own conscience. You will do what seems your duty.” “You mustn’t trust to my conscience. I fling it away! I won’t have anything to do with it. I’ve been tortured enough by it. There is no sense or justice in it!” He laughed easily at her vehemence. “I’ll trust your conscience. But I won’t stay to worry you now. I’m coming again day after to-morrow, and I’m not afraid of what you will say then.” He turned and left her, tearing his way through the sweet-fern and low blackberry vines, with long strides, a shape of uncouth force. After he was out of sight, she followed, scared and trembling at herself, as if she had blasphemed. XI. Grace burst into the room where her mother sat; and flung her hat aside with a desperate gesture. “Now, mother, you have got to listen to me. Dr. Mulbridge has asked me to marry him!” Mrs. Breen put up her spectacles on her forehead, and stared at her daughter, while some strong expressions, out of the plebeian or rustic past which lies only a generation or two behind most of us, rose to her lips. I will not repeat them here; she had long denied them to herself as an immoral self-indulgence, and it must be owned that such things have a fearful effect, coming from old ladies. “What has got into all the men? What in nature does he want you to marry him for?” “Oh, for the best reasons in the world,” exclaimed the daughter. “For reasons that will make you admire and respect him,” she added ironically. “For great, and unselfish, and magnanimous reasons!” “I should want to believe they were the real ones, first,” interrupted Mrs. Breen.