The beautiful creature, perplexity and disappointment mingling on her face, stood for a moment nonplussed. The expression of alert and confident resourcefulness had departed. Her intelligence had failed her. Yet once more the old smile mounted bravely. "But there still remains one thing," she breathed softly, leaning toward him. "That is I. Everything you have got is gone, or going. I have taken it away from you that I might give you instead myself. You had no room for me last week. You have nothing else but me now. It hurt me to give you pain. I hate Searle. I could have torn his tongue out yesterday. But you will forgive me, John. I did it for love." Her utterance was indescribably pathetic—indescribably appealing. "I am not to blame that I love you. You are to blame. No, the God that constituted us is to blame." Her tones grew lower and lower. The spirit of humbled pride, of chastened submission, of helpless want entered more and more into the expression of her face and the timbre of her soft voice, while the very outlines of her figure seemed to melt and quiver with the intensity of yearning. "It has been hard to humble myself in this way to you," she confessed. "I tried to win you as once I won you, as women like to win their lovers. But I am not quite as other women. I have to have you! My nature is imperious. It will shatter itself or have its will. I shattered your love to gain my ambition’s goal. And now I have shattered your career to gain your love again." Hampstead, though his consideration was growing for the woman, could not resist a shaft of irony. "That was a sacrifice you took the liberty of making for me," he suggested. "But, don’t you see, it made me possible for you again," and the actress smiled with that obtuseness which was pitiful because it would not see defeat. She drew closer to him now, well within reach of his arm, and stood perfectly still, her hands clasped, her bosom heaving gently, a thing of rounded curves and wistful eyes, the figure of passionate, submissive, appealing love, hoping—desiring—waiting—to be taken. Yet the minister did not take her. But whatever agonies of lingering suspense, of dying hope, and rising despair may have passed through the indomitable woman as she stood in this pose of vain and helpless waiting, there was yet a spirit in her that would not surrender because it could not. With eyes mournfully searching the depths of the face before her, she began her last appeal.