As she viewed the stone population, no one could have told what was passing in Rachel's stormy little breast, for if there was a spark in her eyes that seemed to indicate subterranean depths of passion, the rest of her features were astonishingly passive. Her gloves hampered her, and with nervous gestures she began taking them off. Tense and silent and acutely vital, she stood beside Emil, an expression of all that is baffling and mysterious in woman. Conscious of a dryness in his throat, he kept his eyes to the statues. "They are said to be the largest figures ever cut," he murmured. "They are for the pediment of the new Century Library." "How still they are!" "Yes, and one rather expects them to speak and move." Suddenly swinging round, he looked her in the eyes. "Oh, my own!" he cried. With uncertain steps he moved toward her. And swift and strong between them, Fate drew her thread of love; in that electric net of hers, she caught their souls and drew them close together. She took the pair of them, as a fowler takes a bird. His savage heart dominated by emotion, Emil trembled with a desire to fall at her feet. But she would not own her capture. "Stop, Emil!" she cried in a suppressed voice; "stop right where you are! I'll not listen to your words! I came here to tell you--" He looked upon her intently: "You came because you had to come!" The speech thrilled with the inspiration of conquest. "Oh, my love," he cried, "haven't the years we've been separated been dreary enough? Haven't they been empty enough for us both?--For you, on your side, you love me; I know it!" Instead of answering she drew herself up. But he ignored these signs of rebellion. "It was a misty day when I first saw you," he pursued, "and yesterday also it was misty and wet, and all at once I understood that I had been carrying the thought of you in my heart from the start. Rachel, you are my heart!" he cried, borne on by the lyric power of his own utterance. "And as I raced after you across that beach, I knew to a certainty it was no one-sided thing. Rachel, that kiss, _your_ kiss--it was not a childish impulse; and I dare to tell you so. We took possession of each other, love, at the first glance! Can you deny it? _Do_ you deny it?" compressing her hands. "No, no, you cannot!" he concluded; "and that being true, it is beyond our own power or the power of any creature, to part us now! Oh, sweet!" and his tone changed quickly as he saw that she shook from head to foot, "look around you,--isn't the world beautiful? haven't we a right to happiness?" Dropping on his knees, he carried her hand to his throbbing breast. "Happiness?" she repeated, "no, no, not happiness! but peace perhaps, and that comes--it comes--" He looked up into her face--up at the quivering bend of her lips, up until his eyes found hers, drowned in tears and almost covered by their fluttering lids--and into his glance flashed a subjugating power, an irresistible force.