"There is a way out if you love me enough to--come to me. Then," he said in a whisper, "he will divorce you and we can be married. Oh, Elizabeth, death is not the way out; it is _life_, dear, life! Will you live? Will you give me life?" He was breathing as if he had been running; he held her fingers against his lips until he bruised them. She understood. After a minute of silence she said, faintly: "As for me, nothing matters. Even if it is wicked--" "It is not wicked!" "Well, if it were, if you wanted me I would come. I don't seem to care. Nothing seems to me wrong in the whole world. And nothing right. Do you understand, David? I am--done. My life is worthless, anyhow. Use it--and throw it away. But it would ruin you. No, I won't do it." "Ruin me? It would make me! I have shriveled, I have starved, I have frozen without you. Ask my mother if what I tell you isn't true." She caught her breath and drew away from him. "Your mother!" she said, faintly. But he did not notice the recoil. "It would end your career," she said. She was confused by the mere tumult of his words. "Career! The only career I want is _you_. Medicine isn't the only thing in the world, nor Philadelphia the only place to practise it. And if I can't be a doctor, I can break stones for my wife. Elizabeth, to love you is the only career I want. But you--can you? Am I asking more than you can give? Do you care what people say? We may not be able to be married for a year. Longer, perhaps; the law takes time. They will call it disgrace, you know, the people who don't know what love means. Could you bear that--for me? Do you love me enough for that, Elizabeth?" His voice was hoarse with passion. He was on his knees beside her, his face hot against hers, his arms around her. Not only his bitterly thought-out theories of individualism, but all his years of decent living, contributed to his overthrow at that moment. He was a man; and here was his woman, who had been torn from him by a thief: she had come back to him, she had toiled back through the storm, she had fought back through cruel and imprisoning ties that had held her for nearly three years; should he not keep her, now that she had come? The cave-dweller in him cried out "_Yes!_" To let her go now, would be to loosen his fingers just as they gripped the neck of the thief who had robbed him! In the madness of that moment of hate and love, his face on hers, his arms around her, David did not know that his tears were wet on her lips. "Mine," he said, panting; "_mine_! my own has come back to me. Say so; tell me so yourself. Say it! I want to hear you say it." "Why David, I have always been yours. But I am not worth taking. I am not--" [Illustration: "WILL YOU LIVE? WILL YOU GIVE ME LIFE?"]