I cannot say that for the moment I had any of the qualms of fear. My yearning over him was too motherly for that. I wanted to comfort and, as far as possible, to encourage him. Something within me whispered, too, the words, "It's going to be up to me." I meant--or that which spoke in me meant--that the whole position was reversed. I had been taking my ease hitherto, believing that the strong young man who had asked me to marry him would do the necessary work. It was to be up to him. My part was to be the passive bliss of having some one to love me and maintain me. That Hugh loved me I knew; that in one way or another he would be able to maintain me I took for granted. With a Brokenshire, I assumed, that would be the last of cares. And now I saw in a flash that I was wrong; that I who was nothing but a parasite by nature would somehow have to give my strong young man support. When all was said that he could say at the moment I took the responsibility of sending Gladys indoors with the maid who was waiting on the table, after which I asked Hugh to walk down the lawn with me. A stone balustrade ran above the Cliff Walk, and here was a bit of shrubbery where no one could observe us from the house, while passers on the Cliff Walk could see us only by looking upward. At that hour in the morning even they were likely to be rare. "Hugh, darling," I said, "this is becoming very, very serious. You're throwing yourself out of house and home and your father's good-will for my sake. We must think about it, Hugh--" His answer was to seize me in his arms--we were sufficiently screened from view--and crush his lips against mine in a way that made speech impossible. Again I must make a confession. It was his doing that sort of thing that paralyzed my judgment. You will blame me, perhaps, but, oh, reader, have you any idea of what it is never to have had a man wild to kiss you before? Never before to have had any one adore you? Never before to have been the greatest of all blessings to so much as the least among his brethren? The experience was new to me. I had no rule of thumb by which to measure it. I could only think that the man who wanted me with so mad a desire must have me, no matter what reserves I might have preferred to make on my own account. I struggled, however, and with some success. For the first time I clearly perceived that occasions might arise in which, between love and marriage, one might have to make a distinction. Ethel Rossiter's dictum came back to me: "People can't go about marrying every one they love, now can they?" It came to me as a terrible possibility that I might be doomed to love Hugh all my life, and equally doomed to refuse him. If I didn't, the responsibilities would be "up to me." If besides loving him I were to accept him and marry him, it would be for me to see that the one possible condition was fulfilled. I should have to bring J. Howard to his knees.