He did not speak. The soft golden hair lay in his hand, warm and alive. He looked down at her. He could soon turn this childish affection into love: he could wrench her soul into his own. Why should he not take what God had set before him? All the other men of his race had done it. One moment he stood irresolute. Then the hair dropped from his hand. "Jane," he said, as if reasoning with a child, "when I remember my mother first she was a pretty, tender little woman, with hardly a thought outside of her boy. For years before she died I was forced to fasten her as one does a wild beast, that she might not kill me. Do you understand what that was to me? Do you think I can bring the misery I knew in those years to any woman? My wife shall never have it to bear." "But you can have no wife!" she cried. "You said you dared not marry! _I_ can bear the misery. You will come to us--us. Those women in Washington of whom you tell me--how could they know what you need? I have nobody but you and father." She felt herself so young and strong! Death, a most horrible and certain death, was creeping upon him. In her agony of pity she held his hand to her wet, burning cheeks. "Jane, you drive me mad!" stooping over her trembling. "It is you--you that I dare not marry!" She stood erect: "_I_ marry you? I never thought of that," simply. "You never thought of it?" with a queer uncertain laugh. "You never thought that I loved you?" "That you loved me, Mr. Neckart? Me?" The blue innocent eyes that had been fixed on his suddenly filled with light; she dropped her face into her hands; her whole body burned with blushes, and she turned away. Neckart slowly followed her. Jane's thoughts were always transparent as crystal: he had read in that one brief glance all the delight, the tender passion, whose first impulse was to escape from him. "I have been a damned scoundrel!" he said to himself: "I have ruined her life!" He was now thoroughly awake to what he had done--saw it as any other practical, honorable man would do, unbiased by his passion or his pity for himself. He walked silently beside her as she went up the steep path to the house.