"And yet, John, there is a sacrifice that I am willing to make that is all my own and none of yours. I will renounce my own ambition, abandon the stage, cancel my engagements, give up that for which I have bartered everything a woman has to give but one thing. I have kept that one thing for you alone. The name of Marien Dounay shall disappear. I will be Alice Higgins again. I will be not an artist but a wife. I will be the associate of your work. You must go from here, of course. I have made your remaining impossible. But we will find some place where men and women need the kind of thing that you can do. It is a great need. There is a sort of glory in your work which I have not been too blind to see. My bridal flowers shall be the weeds of humble service. I will employ my art to bring cheer into homes of poverty, freshness and brightness to the sick. I will try to be God’s replica of all that you yourself are. I say I will try!" She had raised her face now and was searching his eyes again. "I will do all of this, eagerly, joyously, fanatically, John Hampstead, if it will make it possible for you to love me—as once you loved me," she concluded, with the last words barely audible and sounding more like heart throbs than human speech. Hampstead, looking levelly into her face, saw that the woman spoke the truth, that she was absolutely sincere. She saw that he saw it, and with a gesture of mute appeal threw out her hands to him. But they gathered only air and fell limply to her side. The minister, although his manner expressed a world of sympathy, shook his head sadly. Marien’s face grew white, and the red of her lips almost disappeared. A look of blank terror came into her eyes, while one hand, with fingers half-closed, stole upward to the blanched cheek, and the other was pressed convulsively against her breast. "I have my answer—John!" she whispered hoarsely, after an interval. "I have my answer!" "Yes, Marien," he replied, sorrowfully but decisively, "you have your answer." Her eyes, always eloquent, and now with a look of terrible hurt in them, suffused quickly, and it seemed that she would burst into tears and fling herself weakly upon the man she loved so hopelessly. Instead, however, only a shiny drop or two coursed down the cheeks which continued as white as marble; and she held herself resolutely aloof, but balancing uncertainly until all at once her rounded figure seemed to wilt and she would have fallen, had not the minister thrown an arm about the tottering form and with gentle brotherliness of manner helped her to a seat in the Morris chair. For a considerable time she sat with her face in her hands, silent but for an occasional dry, eruptive sob. Hampstead, standing back with arms folded and one hand making a rest for his chin, looked on helplessly, realizing that for the first time he was studying this complex personality with something like real comprehension.