'No, no,' he went on quickly; 'you don't understand; you can't understand my feelings when I began to suspect, about two months ago, that, after all, the incredible had happened. I'm nothing but your publisher. I can't talk. I can't write. I can't play. I can't do anything. And look at the men you have here! I've sometimes wondered how often you've been besieged--' 'None of them was like you,' I said. 'Perhaps that is why I have always kept them off.' I raised my eyes and lips, and he stooped and kissed me. He wanted to take me in his arms again, but I would not yield myself. 'Be reasonable,' I urged him. 'Ought we not to think of our situation?' He loosed me, stammering apologies, abasing himself. 'I ought to leave you, I ought never to see you again.' He spoke roughly. 'What am I doing to you? You who are so innocent and pure!' 'I entreat you not to talk like that,' I gasped, reddening. 'But I must talk like that,' he insisted. 'I must talk like that. You had everything that a woman can desire, and I come into your life and offer you--what?' 'I _have_ everything a woman can desire,' I corrected him softly. 'Angel!' he breathed. 'If I bring you disaster, you will forgive me, won't you?' 'My happiness will only cease with your love,' I said. 'Happiness!' he repeated. 'I have never been so happy as I am now; but such happiness is terrible. It seems to me impossible that such happiness can last.' 'Faint heart!' I chided him. 'It is for you I tremble,' he said. 'If--if--' He stopped. 'My darling, forgive me!' How I pitied him! How I enveloped him in an effluent sympathy that rushed warm from my heart! He accused himself of having disturbed my existence. Whereas, was it not I who had disturbed his? He had fought against me, I knew well, but fate had ordained his defeat. He had been swept away; he had been captured; he had been caught in a snare of the high gods. And he was begging forgiveness, he who alone had made my life worth living! I wanted to kneel before him, to worship him, to dry his tears with my hair. I swear that my feelings were as much those of a mother as of a lover. He was ten years older than me, and yet he seemed boyish, and I an aged woman full of experience, as he sat there opposite to me with his wide, melancholy eyes and restless mouth. 'Wonderful, is it not,' he said, 'that we should be talking like this to-night, and only yesterday we were Mr. and Miss to each other?' 'Wonderful!' I responded. 'But yesterday we talked with our eyes, and our eyes did not say Mr. or Miss. Our eyes said--Ah, what they said can never be translated into words!'