"I'm awfully sorry, Mary! Please forgive me--I don't ask you to release me. All I want to do is to explain exactly what I feel, and then leave you to decide." "Are you--are you in love with anyone else?" "No!" The smile of Mrs. Wallace flashed scornfully across his mind, but he set his teeth. He hated and despised her; he would not love her. "Is there anything in me that you don't like which I might be able to correct?" Her humility was more than he could bear. "No, no, no!" he cried. "I can never make you understand. You must think me simply brutal. You have all that a man could wish for. I know how kind you are, and how good you are. I think you have every quality which a good woman should have. I respect you entirely; I can never help feeling for you the most intense gratitude and affection." In his own ears the words he spoke rang hollow, awkward, even impertinent. He could say nothing which did not seem hideously supercilious; and yet he wanted to abase himself! He knew that Mary's humiliation must be very, very bitter. "I'm afraid that I am distressing you frightfully, and I don't see how I can make things easier." "Oh, I knew you didn't love me! I felt it. D'you think I could talk to you for five minutes without seeing the constraint in your manner? They told me I was foolish and fanciful, but I knew better." "I must have caused you very great unhappiness?" Mary did not answer, and James looked at her with pity and remorse. At last he broke out passionately: "I can't command my love! It's not a thing I have at my beck and call. If it were, do you think I should give you this pain? Love is outside all calculation. You think love can be tamed, and led about on a chain like a dog. You think it's a gentle sentiment that one can subject to considerations of propriety and decorum, and God knows what. Oh, you don't know! Love is a madness that seizes one and shakes one like a leaf in the wind. I can't counterfeit love; I can't pretend to have it. I can't command the nerves of my body." "Do you think I don't know what love is, James? How little you know me." James sank on a chair and hid his face. "We none of us understand one another. We're all alike, and yet so different. I don't even know myself. Don't think I'm a prig when I say that I've tried with all my might to love you. I would have given worlds to feel as I felt five years ago. But I can't. God help me!... Oh, you must hate and despise me, Mary!" "I, my dear?" she shook her head sadly. "I shall never do that. I want you to speak frankly. It is much better that we should try to understand one another." "That is what I felt. I did not think it honest to marry you with a lie in my heart. I don't know whether we can ever be happy; but our only chance is to speak the whole truth." Mary looked helplessly at him, cowed by her grief. "I knew it was coming. Every day I dreaded it."