“Oh, David—let me help you.” He shook his head in a slow, considering manner. “No—there would be only one way—and that’s not fair.” “What isn’t fair, David?” “You—to marry—me,” he said, still in that slow, considering way. “You know, Elizabeth, I can’t think very well. My head is all to pieces. But it’s not fair, and I can’t take your help—” He broke off frowning. “David, it has nothing to do with that sort of thing,” said Elizabeth very seriously. “It’s only what I would do for any one.” She was shaken to the depths, but she kept her voice low and steady. “Yes—it has—one can’t take like that——” “Because I’m a woman? Just because I’m a woman?” Elizabeth looked up quickly and spoke quickly, because she knew that if she stopped to think she would not speak at all. “And if we were married?” “Then it would be different,” said David Blake. His voice was not like his usual voice. It sounded like the voice of a man who was puzzled, who was trying to recall something of which he has seen glimpses. Was it something from the past, or something from the future? Elizabeth got up and stood as he was standing—one hand on the oak shelf above the fireplace the other clenched at her side. “David, are you asking me to marry you?” she said. He raised his head, half startled. The silence that followed her question seemed to fill the room and shake it. His will shook too, drawn this way and that by forces that were above and beyond them both. Elizabeth did not look at him. She did not know what he would answer, and all their lives hung on that answer of his. She held her breath, and it seemed to her that she was holding her will too. She was suddenly, overpoweringly conscious of her own strength, her own vital force and power. If she let this force go out to David now—in his weakness! It was the greatest temptation that she had ever known, and, after one shuddering moment, she turned from it in horror. She kept her will, her strength, her vital powers in a strong grip. No influence of hers must touch or sway him now. Her heart stopped beating. Her very life seemed to be suspended. Then she heard David say: “Would you marry me, Elizabeth?” His tone was a wondering one. It broke the tension. She turned her head a little and said: “Yes—if you needed me.” “Need—need—I think I should sleep—and if I don’t sleep I shall go mad. But, perhaps I shall go mad anyhow. You must not marry me if I am going mad.” “You won’t go mad.” “You think not? There is something that shakes all the time. It never stops. It goes on always. I think that is why I don’t sleep. But when I am with you it seems to stop. I don’t know why, but it does seem to stop, just whilst I am with you.” “It will stop altogether when you get your sleep back.” “Oh, yes.” The half-dreamy note went out of his voice, and the note of intimate self-revealing. Elizabeth noticed the change at once. “When do you go away, and where do you go?” she asked.