"Unkind! I am a miserable wretch pleading for life, and you call me unkind. Suzette, have pity on me! I have not succumbed without a struggle. I loved you from the hour we met--from that first hour when my heart leapt into a new life at the sound of your voice. On looking back, it seems to me now that I must have so loved you from the beginning. I can recall no hour in which I did not love you. But I have fought the good fight, Suzette. Self-banished from the presence I adore, I have lived between earth and sky, until, though I have something of the sportsman's instinct, I have come almost to hate the music of the hounds and the call of the huntsman's horn, because in every mile my horse galloped he was carrying me further from you, and every hour I spent far afield was an hour I might have spent with you." "It is cruel of you to persecute me like this." "No, no, Suzette; you must not talk of persecution. If I am rough and vehement to-night, it is because I am resolute to ask the question that has been burning on my lips ever since I knew you. I will not be put off from that. But once the question asked and answered I have done, and, if it must be so, you have done with me. There shall be no such thing as persecution. I am here at your side, your devoted lover--no better man than Allan Carew, but I think as good a man, with as fair a record, of as old and honourable a race, richer in this world's gear; but that's not much to such a woman as Suzette. It is for you to choose between us; and it is not because you said yes to him before you had ever seen my face that you are to say no to me, if there is the faintest whisper in your heart that pleads for me against him." She stood silent, her eyelids drooping over eyes that were not tearless. His words thrilled her, as his violin had thrilled her sometimes in some lingering, plaintive passage of old-world music. His face was near hers, and his hand was on her shoulder, detaining her. The intellectuality, the refinement of the delicately chiselled features, the pallor of the clear complexion were intensified by the dim light. She could not but feel the charm of his manner. He was like Allan--yet how unlike! There was a fascination in this face, a music in this voice, which were wanting in Allan, frank, and bright, and honest, and true though he was. There was in this man just the element of poetry and unreasoning impulse which influences a woman in her first youth more than all the manly virtues that ever went to the making of the Christian Hero. Suzette had time to feel the power of that personal charm before she collected herself sufficiently to answer him with becoming firmness. For some moments she was silent, under the influence of a spell which she knew must be fatal to her peace and Allan's happiness, should she weakly yield. No, she would not be so poor, so fickle a creature. She would be staunch and true, worthy of Allan's love and of her father's confidence.