“I’ll tell you the truth, Gordon. Yes, there are moments when I’m miserable—terribly miserable—and not because of my clouded parentage, either. Sometimes I don’t think I quite know what it is. And yet—and yet—at others——” “Madge, you’ve never been really in love, have you—away down deep inside—so deep that you could give that loved one up, if need be, to insure that loved one’s happiness?” “No, Gordon, I don’t believe I have.” “That’s strange, Madge. It’s extraordinary for a woman to reach twenty-seven and never have known a love affair—a real one. And yet in your case, I don’t know that it’s so extraordinary, after all. You’re so different in many ways——” He stopped abruptly at the mask of pain which slipped over the girl’s cameo features. “So different!” Always she had heard that “so different.” And never once had she ever wanted to be different, not realizing how beautifully Gordon meant it, what a compliment he was trying to pay her, entirely aside from any question of policy or to abet his own suit. “Please don’t say I’m different, Gordon,” she pleaded. “It hurts—terribly!” “But you are different, you know. Not queer or eccentric, I don’t mean. You’re so much more elegant and delicate—oh, tosh! I don’t mean to sound silly, or indulge in the callow ravings of a school kid. But—oh, Madge, the man who gets you will get a gift direct from the fairies, indeed!” He waited a moment and then added softly, “And, God!—_how_ I’d appreciate being that man!” Tumultuous emotions swept and swayed the girl. She studied the toe of her satin house slipper. That feeling of helplessness came over her again—the sensation of drifting, drifting—on and on—into Gordon Ruggles’s arms at last—his wife! Well, and what of it? He was proving himself a man and he loved her. There was not a doubt about that. He loved her. “Gordon,” she said unevenly, “you’re going to keep at me and keep at me until you make me your wife, aren’t you?” There was no rebuke in her voice. “In what other way, dear, does a man win the heart of the woman he loves?” Madelaine sprang from the divan and walked down the room. She threw up her soft, bare, beautiful arms. From her throat came a cry. “Yes, I’m different—different!—different because romance has never come to me as it has come to other girls—sweet, wild romance that would make me love a man so deeply and fiercely I’d follow him over the world and live with him in a hovel, to be close beside him!—love him so that he would beat me, if you please, and I could suffer it—because I loved him! Oh, Gordon! Gordon! You may win, after all, for you’ve overcome the most of any man I’ve ever known. But you’ll never know the heart of a woman! You’ll never know! You’ll never know!” He kissed her hand when he left her at the door that night. Despite his great love, despite the inspiration she was in his life—was he hurting her by denying her that Great Romance she might possibly find after he had married her?