"I did not expect to win you in a moment," he said. "I should not have expected it if I had waited another year. I knew from the beginning that it would be hard work, for if a woman does not love at once it takes a long time to teach her what love is. I have tried to make you like me, and I think I have succeeded. That is all I can hope for now. You have been surfeited and satiated with admiration, and you regard all men as having been born to burn incense before you. I love you for that too. I should hate a woman who even had it in her to love a man out of gratitude. You have your world at your feet, and I want mine at my feet. You have won yours without effort, for you were born with the crown and sceptre of fascination, I have to fight for mine. But the same instinct is in us both, the same possibilities on different lines. I am not making you the broken passionate appeal of the usual lover, because so long as I know you do not love me I could not place myself at the mercy of emotion--I have no thought of making a fool of myself. But when I do win you--then--ah! that will be another matter." She shook her head, but smiling, for she never had liked and admired him more. She knew of what passion he was capable, and how absurd he would have looked if lashed by it while her cool eyes looked on. His self-control made him magnificent. "I never shall marry," she said, and then laughed, in spite of herself, at the world-old formula. Burleigh laughed also. "There isn't time enough left before chaos comes again to argue with a woman a question which means absolutely nothing. I am going to marry you. I have accomplished everything big I have ever strived for. I never have wanted to marry any other woman, and I want to marry you more than I wanted to become a Senator of the United States. Nothing could discourage me unless I thought you loved another man, but so far as I can see there is no other suitor in the field. You appear to have refused every proposing man in Washington. Is there any one on the other side?" he asked anxiously. "No one. I have no suitor beside yourself; but--" "I don't understand that word, any more than I understand the word 'fail,'" he said in his rapid truculent tones. Then he added more gently: "I am afraid you think I should be a tyrant, but no one would tyrannize over you, for you are any man's equal, and he never would forget it. I could not love a fool. I want a mate. And I should love you so much that I never should cease atoning for my fractious and other unpleasant qualities--" "You have none! I cannot do less than tell you I think you are one of the finest men this country has produced, and that I am as proud of you as she will be--" "Let me interrupt you before you say 'but.' That I have won so high an opinion from you gives me the deepest possible gratification. But I want much more than that. Let us go on with our walk. I'll say no more at present." XI