He was quite calm under this outcry. “Yes, your champion Glyde was here. A good fellow in the main, but, Lord! what a donkey! I think I did him good. He left me a week ago. He had told me about you--found out where you lived, and what was happening.” She sat with her face between her hands, dared not let him see it. Senhouse resumed the question of her marriage. “It doesn't matter what you do. You are you. So Ingram has forgiven Master Glyde, and now--” She lifted her pale face at this name of duty. “His wife died a year ago; rather more. He wants me to marry him, and I think I must.” “You don't want to?” She shook her head, watching her fingers tear the grass. “No,” she said, “not in the least. But I shall do it. Don't you think that I should?” He thought, then threw his arms out. “God knows what I am to say! If the world held only you and me and him--here--fast in this valley--I tell you fairly. I should stop it.” She looked up quickly, and their eyes met. Hers were haunted with longing. He had to turn his head. “But it doesn't. To me what you intend to do seems quite horrible because I am flesh, and cannot see that you are spirit. That is a perfectly reasonable reading of the Laws, which says, What I did as a child I must abide as a woman. It's a law of Nature, after all's said; and yet it can be contradicted in a breath. It's one of those everlasting propositions which are true both ways, positively and negatively; for Nature says, That is my rule, and immediately after, Break it if you're strong enough. Now, you are, but I am not.” Once more they looked at each other, these two who had but one desire between them--and who knew it each of each. And again it was he who broke away. “I'm a coward, I'm false to my own belief. It's love that makes me so. Oh, Heaven, I see so well what it would be! And it would be right, mind you. These laws of Society are nothing, absolutely nothing. But you are pleased, for reasons, to submit. You are deliberate, you are strong. It's the old thing over again. Hideous, vile, abominable servitude! But you are pleased to do it. You say it is Destiny, and you may be right. I tell you once more, I dare not say a word against it.” “No, no,” she said hastily; “don't say anything to stop me. I must go on with it. I have promised. He knows I don't love him, and he doesn't care.” Senhouse pricked up his head. “Does he love you, do you suppose? Do you believe it?” She shrugged half-heartedly. “He says so. He seemed to when I told him that I was going away. “When was that?” he asked her. She told him the whole story as the reader knows it. Senhouse heard her, his head between his hands. At the end of it, he looked out over the valley. “Would to God,” he said, “you and I had never met, Sanchia.” Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, why do you say that?”