“Blaise!... Blaise!... What are you thinking of? Oh! We’re mad--mad!” She covered her face with her shaking hands but he drew them away, gazing down at her with eyes that worshipped. “No, beloved, we’re not mad,” lie cried triumphantly. “We’re sane--sane at last. We were mad to think we could live apart, mad to dream we could starve love like ours. That was when we were mad! But we’ll never be parted again; sweet----” “Blaise,” she whispered, staring at him with horrified, dilated eyes. “You don’t know what you are saying! You’re forgetting Nesta--your wife. Oh, go--go quickly! You must not stay here and talk like this to me!” “No,” he returned. “I won’t go, Jean. I’ve come to take you away with me.” Once more his arms went round her. “Belovedest, I can’t live without you any longer. I’ve tried--and I can’t do it. Jean, you’ll come? You love me enough--enough to come away with me to the ends of the earth where we’ll find happiness at last?” She sought to free herself from his, clasp, pressing with straining hands against his chest. “No! No!” she cried breathlessly. “I can’t go with you... you know I can’t! Ah! Don’t ask me, Blaise!” There was an agony of supplication in her voice. “But I do ask you. And if you love me”--his eyes holding hers--“you’ll come, Jean.” “I do love you,” she answered earnestly. “But it isn’t the you I love asking me this, Blaise. It’s some other man--a stranger----” “If you love me, you’ll come,” he reiterated doggedly. “I can’t live without you, Jean. I want you--oh, heart’s beloved, if you knew--” And the burning, passionate words, the pent-up love and longing of months of separation and despair, came pouring from his lips--beseeching and demanding, wringing her heart, pulling at the love within her that ached to give him the answer which he craved. “Oh, Blaise, dearest of all--hush! Hush!” She checked him brokenly, with quivering lips. “I can’t go with you. It wouldn’t bring us happiness. Ah, listen to me, dear!” She came close to him and laid her hands imploringly on his arm, lifting her white, stricken face to his. “It would only spoil our love--to take it like that when we have no right to. It would smirch and soil it, make it something different. I think--I think, in the end, Blaise, it would kill it.” “Nothing would ever kill my love for you,” he exclaimed passionately. “Jean, little Jean, think of what our life together might be--the glory and beauty of it--just you and I in our House of Dreams!” She caught her breath. Oh! Why did he make it so hard for her? With every fibre of her being yearning towards him she must refuse, deny him, drive him away from her.