But Elise’s resistance was fixed and set. Rutledge pleaded and begged and made love to her with all the tenderness of his heart and the energy of his passion for her, and exerted his physical strength to break down her defence. "Tell me that you wrote it, sweetheart," he implored and besought her again and again: but she only shook her head in dissent. He exhausted every prayer and plea without avail. Desperately resolved to win at any cost, he could only hold her fast and swear in his heart she should not escape him. Finally he called upon all his muscular power to crush her into surrender, and mercilessly bore in upon her. Elise bore out against him with all her strength. Her face became first crimson and then pale with the effort. Her teeth bit into her lips. Her breathing became fast and faster. But her will would not bend. The man’s brute force was almost vicious in its unrestraint. A tear was forced through her tight-shut lashes, but her chin was still uplifted in defiance when— "You hurt me, Evans," she said, as her resistance collapsed and her face fell hidden against his breast. "And you wrote the letter, Elise?" he contended, broken-hearted that he had hurt her, but holding her fiercely yet. "Yes, dear;"—and he is holding her so tenderly now. * * * * * Weakly she stood, held close within his arms, until her exhaustion passed, while he murmured to her the gentle nothings which have been messengers of love in all ages. Very gently then she freed herself from his embrace, permitting him still to hold her fingers. "Let your own lips tell me you love me, Elise." She looked up at him from under drooping lashes. Her mental decision came before her actual complaisance. She revelled for a time in the ecstasy of her mental abandon to love, and trembled in the very joy of it. "Yes, yes, I love you,"—and with closing eyes she lifted her face in surrender. A long, long caress intoxicates them, and then, as if in expiation for the blessed delirium of it— "But not while Helen—not until Helen—oh, it is too horrible to wait for your own sister to die!"—and she is crying her heart out against his shoulder. Rutledge waited till her tears were spent, and then tenderly he protested. "But Elise, you will not make any such decree as that. There’s no need that we should wait on Helen’s account." "Not while she lives, not while she lives," Elise repeated, looking into his eyes. "I cannot permit your love to bring you to—" "My love is all-sufficient, Elise; and all else is nothing since you love me. Do not let your pride defeat us of our happiness, sweetheart. Already it—" "Pride? I have no pride any more for you, my dear. I do not conceal my heart’s love nor its woes from you. I believe that love alone, not _noblesse_, brings you to me now. I love you, yes, I love you, but my love forbids that I should marry you and destroy your career and your mother’s happiness."