'I love you: there is no stronger word or thing that I know of,' replied Geoffrey, feeling, indeed, an immense gush of tenderness in his heart, which his anxiety deepened. She made no immediate answer, but Geoffrey felt that she was full of restrained excitement, and he insensibly prepared himself for some kind of shock. In this short space he recognised that there might be much in Ellice which he had never known or comprehended. 'But there are so many things in the world!' she broke out suddenly and vehemently. 'Why are they there unless we were meant to have some relation to them? Wealth, and society, and power, and fame; to be able to go where you like and do what you will; to carry out all that is in your mind, without any hindrance from mean and contemptible obstacles that degrade you as well as imprison you! How can one even love with one's whole heart if all those things are wanting? Are you sure you could, Geoffrey?' 'I don't expect to have perfection in everything,' replied he, beginning to feel relieved; 'but the question is, whether all these things you speak of are better worth having than love. Of course, it would be pleasant to have both; but, as a matter of fact, most people seem to get either the one or the other, and not both--except those poor devils who get neither.' 'Oh, I know it--I know it. That is perfectly true, though I don't know why it should be so--I don't think it ought to be so.' She relinquished his arm, and began feverishly to pull off her gloves. 'It is hateful to have to choose,' she added. 'Luckily, we are spared that pain, at all events,' remarked Geoffrey with a smile. Ellice stopped in her walk, and turning a little towards him, looked at him attentively. She had the air of mentally putting some alternative before herself, and deciding which course she would pursue. She then walked on more slowly, with her eyes downcast. 'One thinks what one would do in such and such a case, even when it does not actually come to pass,' she said. 'A great fortune is a great thing--it is something real. Suppose you had to choose between a great fortune and me?' 'It would be choosing between a great fortune and a greater. Of course I should take the greater,' returned Geoffrey, feeling a certain intellectual satisfaction in his answer. But Ellice pressed her scarlet lips together, as if rejecting any merely complimentary or epigrammatical evasion of her enquiry. She was, in fact, more in earnest than he was, because he had come to the conclusion that she was merely disquieting herself, as women sometimes will, about an imaginary, not to say impossible, contingency. The best way to treat such conduct was to laugh at it. 'But you are a man,' she resumed presently, 'and it would be different with you, because when a man has not got a fortune, he always thinks he can make one. But if you were a woman?' 'In that case I should get the man to decide for me.'