"Do you accept my offer?" Echo's voice was without a tremor; it held the same hard quality that controlled her features. "Accept!" He came toward her--would have taken her hands, but that she drew back. "Do you remember what I told you that day in your garden, a year ago--that nothing counted, nothing but you? For you I would barter every ambition I have ever known. I would sell the world, if I had it!" "When you told me that," she said steadily, "I answered that I did not love you. I have not changed in that regard, nor shall I ever change. I can bring you no love, but I can--can marry you." He laughed harshly. "Very well; I would not have it different, after all. I am not made on the pattern of other men: I would rather take you against your will--you will be all the more mine! I love even that fine disdain of yours! For it shall not last--I swear that! You shall love me in the end, as I have loved you!" "Loved!" she repeated, with an accent of chill and wondering scorn. "Yes, loved!" The words were almost a cry: they held fierce protest, even anger, yet there was in them a kind of appeal that lent them a sombre and tragic dignity. "But you despised me! You had stood first of all things. But if you could be nothing to me, then the game I played stood second. I played, as always, to win. The cards fell oddly--your father's letters, no matter how, came into my hands. They were to my purpose, and I would have used them. Why should I hold back? Out of regard for him? I regard no man!" "Yet he is my father. And you profess--ah, if this is love, I had rather you hated me! I know nothing of a love that is neither brave nor compassionate, that strikes at the aged and defenceless and that is without--honour!" He had not taken his eyes from her face, and now there grew in them a strange, haggard fire. Relentless and unscrupulous as was that love of his, Harry could have pitied him at that moment. "Honour?" he said. "It is an empty word to me! What is honour, what is anything, to me without you--Echo, Echo!" "If you love me so--and now, indeed, I will believe it--give me the letters!" She took a step toward him, her hands clasped together. "Be as chivalrous as you are strong! Do not do this ignoble thing to break my life! I may be your friend, if not--that other. Surely you cannot want to take me at such a price! Do this and all my life long I will be grateful! Oh, I would ask you on my knees! Give me the letters!"