She merely bowed and waited in silence. "When you learn my motive for making my request, for coming here to-night, you will probably resent it, but you have taught me to expect little else except resentment from you." "Mr. Clancy, there is no cause for such language. Certainly I was quietly pursuing the even tenor of my way." "Do you understand fully whither that way is leading?" "Truly, Mr. Clancy, that is a singular question for you to ask." "I understand you, Mara. You mean that it is no affair of mine." He knew that her silence gave assent to this view, and he answered as if she had spoken. "Nevertheless you are mistaken. It _is_ an affair of mine. There could be no peace for me in the future if I failed you now, for it seems to me I am the only true friend you have in the world." "Mr. Clancy," she said hotly, "we have differed so greatly before that I might have been saved the pain of this interview, but we never differed as we do at this moment. I cannot listen to you any longer. It would be disloyalty to those who _are_ true friends--friends that I love and honor." "Do you love Captain Bodine?" "Certainly I do. He was my father's friend; he is my honored friend." "Do you _love_ Captain Bodine?" "What do you mean?" she asked angrily, flushing to her very brow. "Mara, be calm. Listen to me as you value your life, as you value your own soul. Do you think I would come here for slight cause at such cost to us both?" "I think you are strangely mistaken in coming here, and using language which makes me doubt your sanity." "Please do me the justice to note that there is nothing wild in my manner, nor any excitement in my words." "Noting this, I find it more difficult to explain your course, or to pardon it." "It is not necessary at present, that you should do either. Please be patient a few minutes longer and my mission is ended. I am not pleading for myself, but for you. Please listen, or a time may come when in a bitterness beyond words you may regret that you did not hear me. Thank Heaven! it is clear that I have not come too late. Captain Bodine is more than your friend in _his_ feelings; he is your lover, and you are so morbid, unfriended, unguided, that you are capable of sacrificing yourself--" "Hush! you are wronging a man whom you are unworthy to name. He has never dreamed of such love as you suggest." "I am right. Oh, I have learned too deeply in the school of experience not to know. My warning may be of no avail, but you shall not drift unawares into this thing, you shall not enter into it, nor be persuaded into it from a false spirit of self-sacrifice--"