"As we are strangers," she continued, "you will, I hope, pardon me for making a remark that would otherwise be highly impertinent. But your conduct to-day has satisfied me that in speaking to you I am speaking to a high-minded gentleman, who, if he should decline the proposition which I am going to make, will at least feel in honor bound to observe silence both about this interview and the names I shall have to mention." I bowed. This speech, with what had preceded it, taught me more of the art of love--an art that the reader will find, if he cares to follow my fortunes, was to become useless to me--than Ovid and all the other poets and philosophers could have done. It is not beauty, any more than dress or wealth, that creates affection, it is manner; and the essence of that manner which produces the mystic complex emotion which we denote by the term "love" is that it is an exposition of genuine deference for the individual--for himself or herself alone--and apart from all such accidents as rank, or wealth, or position. I therefore bowed, and she proceeded. "My solicitor is Mr. Chambers, of 52 Bedford Row. You will find that he is a gentleman who holds the highest position in his profession. Another friend of mine who would act in this matter is Mr. Charles Duke, of Duke, Furnival & Company, the well-known bankers of Lombard Street. Now I have asked you to come here to-night to put this question to you. Would you marry me within the next week or fortnight, and promise on your word of honor never to attempt to know who I am, or to live with me, or to exercise any marital rights, if you had the guaranty of these two gentlemen that you would be paid five hundred pounds every quarter for the rest of your life? That would be two thousand pounds a year. But the condition is that we are married in this house; that you leave the house immediately after the ceremony, and that you never afterward try to know anything about me." She had finished speaking, speaking throughout in the same calm, measured, and yet easy intonation. If she had carved the words out on marble they could not have stood more clearly before me. I was silent. "Two thousand pounds a year." All, more than all, the wealth I had ever hoped to acquire suddenly realized. And yet, what was the condition on which I was to possess it? The words of the condition seemed to stand before me, but their meaning was not very clear except in its effects. As well ask a man who has just received a stunning blow to diagnose the reasons why the blow has stunned him, as have asked me to explain why the condition on which I was to receive this wealth seemed to turn the wealth itself into ashes. The tears came into my eyes, and I remained silent. "You love some woman, and I should be taking you from her? If so, tell me. God forbid I should do so."