But Mariana was unmoved. "Before I left, it was horrible," she continued. "Whenever onions were served I would leave the table. My father's wife would get angry and that would make me angry." "A congenial family." "But when we get angry we quarrel. It is our nature to do so." She lifted her lashes. "And when we quarrel we talk a great deal, and some of us talk very loud. That is unpleasant, isn't it?" "Very," Algarcife commented. "I find, by the way, that I am beginning to harbor a sympathy for your father's wife." Mariana stared at him and shook her head. "I wasn't nice to her," she admitted, "but she is such a loud woman. I am never nice to people I dislike--but I don't dislike many." She smiled. Algarcife took a step forward, but checked himself. "We will talk it over--to-morrow," he said, and his voice sounded cold from constraint. "I won't go back," protested Mariana. "I--I will marry Mr. Paul first." He held out his hand, and it closed firmly over the one she gave him. "You will not do that, at all events," he said; "for Mr. Paul's sake, as well as your own." Then he drew aside, and Mariana went back to her room. Anthony recrossed the window-sill and paced slowly up and down the uncarpeted floor. His head was bent and his gaze preoccupied, but there was composure in his bearing. He had sent the girl away that he might think before acting. Not that he was not fully aware what the result of his meditation would be, but that for six years he had been in training to resist impulse, and the habit was strong. But there are things stronger than habit, and emotion is among them. In a man who has neither squandered feeling in excesses nor succumbed to the allurement of the senses, passion, when once aroused, is trebly puissant, and is apt to sweep all lesser desires as chaff before the whirlwind. In the love of such a man there is of necessity the freshness of adolescence and the tenacity of maturity. When one has not expended lightly the fulness of desire, the supply is constantly augmented, and its force will be in proportion to the force of the pressure by which it has been restrained. Algarcife, pacing to and fro between his book-lined walls, felt the current of his being straining towards emotion, and knew that the dominance of will was over. In the realization there existed a tinge of regret, and with the rationality which characterized his mental attitude he lamented that the pulseless sanity of his past was broken. And yet he loved Mariana--loved her with a love that would grow with his growth and strengthen with his weakness. He bowed his head, and his hands clinched, while the edge of his blood was sharpened. He beheld her eyes, curtains veiling formless purity--he felt the touch of her hands, the breath of her lips--he heard the rustle of her skirts--and the virginal femininity of her hovered like an atmosphere about him.