"What _could_ have put such an idea into your head?" cry I, clasping my hands, while the tears rain down my cheeks, as--my thoughts again flying to Barbara--I fall from contempt and scorn to the sharpest reproach. "Who would have thought of such a thing? when there are so many better and prettier people who, for all I know, might have liked you. What wicked perversity made you fix upon _me_ who, even if I had not belonged to any one else, could never, _never_ have fancied you!" "Is that true?" he says, in a harsh, rough whisper; "are you sure that you are not deceiving yourself? are you sure that under all your rude words you are not nearer loving me than you think?--that it is not that--with that barrier between us--you cannot reconcile it to your conscience--" "Quite, _quite_ sure!" interrupt I, with passionate emphasis, looking back unflinchingly into the angry depths of his eyes, "it has nothing to say to conscience! it has nothing to say to the _wrongness_ of it" (crimsoning as I speak). "If it were quite right--if it were my _duty_--if it were the only way to save myself from _hanging_" (reaching after an ever higher and higher climax), "I _never_, NEVER could say that I was fond of you! I do not see what there is to be fond of _in_ you! before God, I do not!" "There!" he says, hoarsely stretching out his hand, as if to ward off a blow, "that will do!--stop!--you will never outdo that!" A moment's pause. Down in the loneliness of this dell, the twilight is creeping quickly on: when once it begins it tarries not. Out in the open country I dare say that it is still broad daylight; but here, the hues of the moss carpet are growing duller, and the brook is darkening. In a sudden panic, I hastily catch up my hat, which has fallen to the ground, and without a word or look of farewell, begin to run fast along the homeward path. Before I have gone ten yards he has overtaken me. His face is distorted by passion out of all its beauty. "Nancy," he says, in a voice rendered almost unrecognizable by extreme agitation, walking quickly alongside of me, "we are not going to part like this!" "Do not call me Nancy!" cry I, indignantly; "it makes me _sick_!" "What does it matter what I call you?" he cries, impatiently; "of what consequence is such a trifle? I will call you by what name you please, but for this once you _must_ listen to me. I know, as well as you do, that it is my last chance!" "_That_ it is!" put in I, viciously. The path is beginning to rise. After mounting the slope, we shall soon be out of the wood, and in the peopled open again. "How can I help it, if I have gone mad?" he cries violently, evidently driven to desperation by the shortness of the time before him. "Mad!" echo I, scornfully, "not a bit of it! you are as sane as I am!"