He spoke bitterly, but not at all as he had ever spoken to her before when his temper and hers were at their height. It was the outraged, insulted man, not the passionate boy speaking to her now, and Queenie recognized the difference, and shivered from head to foot, as she crouched down on her knees beside him and sobbed: “Listen to me, Phil, before you judge so harshly, and believe me, as I hope for heaven, I never tried to make you love me this way. You are my cousin—my blood relation; our mothers were sisters, and I have been taught that such unions were wicked, unnatural, such as God disapproves and curses.” “You are not a Roman Catholic?” Phil said, quickly, and she replied: “No, but I had much of that teaching in my childhood, at home in France, and this is one of the things which took deep root in my mind. I had a governess who married her own cousin in spite of everything, and two of her children were idiots, while the third was deaf and dumb, and when the poor mother knew that, she drowned herself in the Seine. Phil, I would no sooner marry my cousin than I would my brother, if I had one, and I looked upon you as a brother, and loved you as such, and thought you understood. Surely, you cannot think me so brazen-faced and bold as to treat you as I have, with a view to making you want me for your wife. I am sorry, Phil, so sorry, and I wish I had never crossed the sea, for I can never be your wife—never! My whole nature revolts against it, the same as if you were my brother, and I know that all is over between us—that we can never be to each other again what we have been in the past. You will come here no more as you have come, and the days will be so long without you, Phil, and, worse than all, you will perhaps think always that I meant to deceive you; but I didn’t. Oh, I didn’t, and you must believe it and forgive me! Will you?” She was still kneeling before him, her white face upturned to his, and every muscle quivering with anguish, as she thus importuned him. He could not resist her, and stooping down he kissed the quivering lips, but did not say he forgave her; he asked, instead: “If I were not your cousin, could you marry me?” “I don’t know, Phil. You see, I never thought about you in that way. I might, perhaps, in time, but I could not now, for you are like a brother, and I must go back to the beginning and build up a new kind of love for you; and then, Phil, I should wish you to be a little different from what you are now. Girls do not generally marry men who have—” Here Queenie stopped suddenly, appalled at her own temerity, but Phil bade her go on in a tone she must obey, and she went on, and said: