"Oh, Margaret, Margaret, Margaret--my soul's soul--I want you. I know no peace but to look into your eyes; I know no heaven but your smile--no God but your possession, no hell but--but--this!" He pressed her hand to his lips and moaned a kind of human bellow of unrequited love--some long suppressed man's courting note that we had in the forest, and he grasped her in a flood of passionate longing. She slipped away from him and stood up before him and said: "No,--No, no, my dear--my dear--I love you--Oh, I do love you, Tom--but don't--don't." He started after her but she pushed him back with her powerful arms and held him. "Tom, don't touch me. Tom," she panted, "Tom." Her big meaningful eyes met his and she held him for a moment silent. He stepped back and she smiled and kissed his forehead when he had dropped into a chair. "Now, Tom, time is slipping by. It's nearly midnight. We've got to talk sensibly and calmly. Sit here by me and be as sane as you can. We know we love one another. That's been said and resaid; that's settled. Now shall I first break for liberty--or will you? That must all be settled too. We can't just let things drift. I'm twenty-seven. You're thirty-five. Life is passing. Now when?" They shrank before the light of a street car rounding the corner, that gleamed into their retreat. When it had gone, the man bowed his fine, proud, handsome head, and spoke with his eyes upon the ground: "You go first--you have the best cause!" She looked upon his cowardly, sloping shoulders, and thought a moment. It was the tigress behind the flame who stooped over him, pondering, feeling her way through events that she had been going over and over in her imagination for weeks. The feline caution that guided her, told her, as it had always told her, that his letters were enough to damn him, but maybe not enough to hold him. She was not sure of men. Their standards might not be severe enough to punish him; he, knowing this, might escape. All this--this old query without answer went hurrying through her mind. But she was young; the spirit of adventure was in her. Henry Fenn, weak, vacillating, chivalrous, adoring Henry Fenn, had not conquered her; and the fire in her blood, and the ambition in her brain, came over her as a spell. She slipped to her knees, putting her head upon her lover's breast, and cried passionately in a guttural murmur--"Yes, I'll go first, Tom--now, for God's sake, kiss me--kiss me and run." Then she sprang up: "Now, go--go--go, Tom--run before I take it back. Don't touch me again," she cried. "Go." She slipped back into the door, then turned and caught him again and they stood for a terrible moment together. She whirled into the house, clicked the door after her and left him standing a-tremble, gaping and mad in the night. But she knew her strength, and knew his weakness and was not afraid.