"A song," reflected he, "that I could sing with a good deal of feeling and conviction, would be 'Give her but the least excuse to love me.'" Maria Dolores all at once looked sober. "Oughtn't you to be careful," she said, "to give her no excuse at all to love you, if you are really resolved never to ask her to be your wife?" "That is exactly what I have given her," answered John, "no excuse at all. I should sing in a spirit purely academic,--my song would be the utterance of a pious but hopeless longing, of the moth's desire for the star." "But she, I suppose, isn't a star," objected Maria Dolores. "She's probably just a weak human woman. You may have given her excuses without meaning to." There was the slightest quaver in her voice. John caught his breath; he turned upon her almost violently. But she was facing away from him, down the avenue, so that he could not get her eyes. "In that case," she said, "wouldn't you owe her something?" "I should owe myself a lifetime's penance with the discipline," John on a solemn tone replied, hungrily looking at her cheek, at the little tendrils of dark hair about her brow. "God knows what I should owe to her." "You would owe it to her," said Maria Dolores, always facing away, "to tell her your love straightforwardly, and to ask her to marry you." John thrilled, John ached. His blue eyes burned upon her. "What else do you think I dream of, night and day? But how could I, with honour? You know my poverty," he groaned. "But if she has enough, more than enough, for two?" softly urged Maria Dolores. "Ah, that's the worst of it," cried he. "If we were equals in penury, if she had nothing, then I might honourably ask her, and we could live on herbs together in a garret, and I could keep her respect and my own. Oh, garret-paradise! But to marry a woman who is rich, to live in luxury with her, and to try to look unconscious while she pays the bills,--she would despise me, I should abhor myself." "Why should she despise you?" asked Maria Dolores. "The possession of wealth is a mere accident. If people are married and love each other, I can't see that it matters an atom whether their money belonged in the first place to the man or to the woman,--it would belong henceforward to them both equally." "That is a very generous way of looking at it, but it is a woman's way. No decent man could accept it," said John.