"My future--not my future happiness. You see, one's parents have got over our young delusions about people being happy. Fathers and mothers forget that love matters. They hold it as we hold the fleeting wretchedness of a toothache. They don't even pity us. Yet my father was a grand lover, for my mother has told me so; but he has forgotten." "You honour me to divulge these sacred things about yourself. Poor Norcot--and yet--in a sense--in truth from my whole heart and soul, I mean. But how is this to the point? To sum up, you don't love him?" "That is exactly what I strive day and night to make clear to everybody." "Would it be beyond the limits of courtesy to breathe a question on so great a subject? Yet I seem to know the answer. It must be so. It sinks like lead into me; you love somebody else, Miss Malherb?" "Heyday! And if I do, why should you be miserable, Mr. Stark? I love my mother, sir, and my father, and--and all who love me--excepting only Mr. Norcot. I love him too--the Bible bids me love him; but I don't like Him. The Bible is too wise to order the impossible. It does not tell us to like anybody." "Listen, if I may--at least----" "Do you hear the river in flood? It is like the sound of an angry sea by night." "I hear it well enough. The snows are melting, and my happiness with them. Oh, if I dared--before I left you! If I had a pinch of my country's courage!" "You do not lack for that, else you would never have seen Dartmoor." "That was the chance of defeat. But real bravery---- There's such a madness here raging in me--such a hurricane that----" "Oh, dearie me! Even such nonsense does Mr. Peter Norcot talk!" "And so you answer him. Yet your eyes are gentler than your tongue. I'll speak--I care not. I'm only a sailor swept here by chance. Fate--at least Providence, I mean--to be plain, I love you! I love you so dearly that I'd--but not until I'm no longer a prisoner. After the war--could you listen then? I--oh, my heart and my life, say I may come back again after the war!" The lightning progress of this business burnt poor Grace like fire. She gasped as he spoke. Her senses reeled. She had not strength to draw from him the hand that he had clasped and now passionately kissed. He was down upon his knees beside her, and she saw his great chest rise and fall, she felt his eyes pierce to her heart and read the truth there. Now she understood her mistake. This was love, and all the past only a ghostly phantom and mockery of it. She longed to give herself up to him. She felt that he offered her life, that his voice woke the soul that had slept until now within her. Then she blushed at the baseness of her thoughts and spoke with levity to hide the first mighty joy and the first master-sorrow that her heart had ached over. "Come back if it pleases you, Mr. Stark. But not to me. Worthless thing that I am, another already claims my love." He released her hand reverently, then rose.