"Doris, you are carried away--this is not what you'll say to-morrow!" "Yes, yes, it is!" she cried fervently. "I'll sacrifice anything now--nothing will ever make me give you up!" "Luckily for you," he said, his look darkening, "you'll have time enough to come to your senses. If you heard all, you know what this means--starting at the beginning." "I heard-- I understand," she said, close to him, her eyes shining with a light that blotted out the world in confused shadow. He looked at her, thrilled by her feeling, by the thought that it belonged to him, that he was the master of it, and yet unconvinced. "It's just your imagination," he said quietly, "that's all. Doris, I know you too well--what you've lived with and what you must have." He added, with a doubting smile: "You remember what you said to me that day on our ride, when we passed through that factory village--'ask me anything but to be _poor_.'" "Bojo," she said, desperately, "you don't understand what a woman is. That was true--then. There's all that you say in me, but there's something else which you've never called out before, which can come when I love, when I really love." She clung to him, fighting for him, feeling how close she had been to losing him. "Bojo, believe in me, give me one more chance!" "To-morrow you'll come to me with some new scheme for making money!" "No, no." "You'll try to persuade me that I should marry you on your money, take the opportunities your father can shove in my way. Oh, Doris, I know you too well!" "No, no, I won't. I don't want--don't you see I don't want to make you do anything? I want to follow you!" "That has been the trouble," he said, abruptly. He turned, walked away, and sat down, gazing out through the window, feeling something dark and enveloping closing about him without his being able to slip away. She came impulsively to his side, flinging herself on the floor at his knees, carried away with the intensity of her emotion. [Illustration: "'What does all the rest amount to?' she said breathlessly. 'I want you'"] "What does all the rest amount to!" she said breathlessly. "I want you! I want a man, not a dummy, in my life. I want some one to look up to, bigger, stronger than I am, that can make me do things." He put his hand on hers, thrilling as he bent quickly and kissed it. "The trouble has been," he said slowly, "all this time I've been trying to come to your ways of living, to reach you. Doris, I can't promise; I'm not sure of myself, of what I think--" "Oh, it would be such a dreadful thing if you were to let me go now," she said suddenly, covering her face. "Now, when I know what I could do!" "Yes," he assented, feeling too the power he had suddenly acquired to make or mar a life, and with that power the responsibility. "You can do anything with me," she said in a whisper.