“Sylvia,” he was saying, earnestly—as if half to convince himself—“we must both of us wait. You must have time to consider what loving me would mean. You have all these people—happy people; and I have nothing like that in my life. You have this beautiful home, expensive clothes—every luxury. But I am a poor man. I have only a mortgaged plantation, with a mother and a brother and two sisters to share it. I have no career—I have not even an education. All your uncles, your cousins, your suitors, are college men, and I am a plain farmer. So I face what seems to me the worst temptation a man could have. I see you, and you are everything in the world that is desirable; and I believe that I could win you and carry you away from here. My whole being cries out, ‘Go and take her! She loves you! She wants you to!’ But instead, I have to come here and say, ‘Think it over. Make sure of your feelings; that it’s not simply a flush of excitement.’ You being the kind of tenderhearted thing you are, it might so easily be a romantic imagining about a man who’s apart from other men—one you feel sorry for and would like to help! You see what I mean? It isn’t easy for me to say it, but I’d be a coward if I didn’t say it—and mean it—and stand by it.” There was a long pause. Sylvia was thinking. How different it was from other men’s love-making! There was Malcolm McCallum, who had taken her driving yesterday, and had said what they all said: “Never mind if you don’t love me—marry me, and let me teach you to love me.” In other words, “Stake your life’s happiness upon a blind chance, at the command of my desire.” Of course they would surround her with all the external things of life, build her a great house and furnish it richly, deck her with silks and jewels and supply her with servants. All the world would come to admire her, and then she would be so grateful to her generous lord that she could not but love him. Her voice was low as she answered, “A woman does not really care about the outside things. She wants love most. She wants to be sure of her heart—but of the man’s heart too.” “As to that,” he said, “I will not trust myself to speak. You are the loveliest vision that has ever come to me. You are——” “I know,” she interrupted. “But that, too, is mostly surface. I am luxurious, I am artificial and shallow—a kind of butterfly.” This was what she said to men when she wished to be most deadly. But now she really meant it; there was a mist of tears in her eyes. “That is nothing,” he answered. “I am not such a fool that I can’t see all that. There are two people in you, as in all of us. The question is, which do you want to be?” “How can I say?” she murmured. “It would be a question of whether you loved me——”