“No, no, not yet—not till you have heard what I have to say.” And he made a movement as though to cut off her retreat. “Well, be quick then,” she answered, in a voice in which vexation and fear struggled for the mastery. Twice Samuel strove to speak, and twice words failed him, for his agitation was very real. At last they came. “I love you,” he said, in an intense whisper. “By the God above you and the dead beneath your feet, I love you, Joan, as you have never been loved before and never will be loved again!” She threw her head back and looked at him, frightened by his passion. The realities of his declaration were worse than she had anticipated. His thin face was fierce with emotion, his sensitive lips quivered, and the long lithe fingers of his right hand played with his beard as though he were plaiting it. Joan grew seriously alarmed: she had never seen Samuel Rock look like this before. “I am sorry,” she murmured. “Don’t be sorry,” he broke in; “why should you be sorry? It is a great thing to be loved as I love you, Joan, a thing that does not often come in the way of a woman, as you will find out before you die. Look here: do you suppose that I have not fought against this? Do you suppose that I wanted to fall into the power of a girl without a sixpence, without even an honest name? I tell you, Joan, I have fought against it and I have prayed against it since you were a chit of sixteen. Chance after chance have I let slip through my fingers for your sake. There was Mrs. Morton yonder, a handsome body as a man need wish for a wife, with six thousand pounds invested and house property into the bargain, who as good as told me that she would marry me, and I gave her the go-by for you. There was the minister’s widow, a lady born, and a holy woman, who would have had me fast enough, and I gave her the go-by for you. I love you, Joan—I tell you that I love you more than land or goods, more than my own soul, more than anything that is. I think of you all day, I dream of you all night. I love you, and I want you, and if I don’t get you then I may as well die for all the world is worth to me.” And he ceased, trembling with passion. If Joan had been alarmed before, now she was terrified. The man’s earnestness impressed her artistic sense—in a certain rude way there was something fine about it but it awoke no answer within her heart. His passion repelled her; she had always disliked him, now she loathed him. Swiftly she reviewed the position in her mind, searching a way of escape. She knew well enough that he had not meant to affront her by his references to her poverty and the stain upon her birth—that these truths had broken from him together with that great truth which animated his life; nevertheless, with a woman’s wit putting the rest aside, it was on these unlucky sayings that she pounced in her emergency.