"But _you_, your own happiness," he urged brokenly. "Have you no thought for your own happiness?" "Happiness?" she said, smiling again. "Oh, I do not expect to find happiness. Women like me, who ask for more than life can possibly give them, have no right to expect the same happiness as the people who have found out that it is better to make a compromise and to take what they can get! Oh, I shall never be greatly happy, I know that. But I do not mind much; it is enough for me that I did once taste the real, glorious happiness, if it was only in snatches." "Won't you taste it again?" he said, drawing her suddenly to him. "Won't you give up this impossible scheme of yours, and come to me? We will be married over there by your father,--now,--this very day. We will go abroad, travel, do what you will. Only come with me, Katharine. You belong to me, and to me only; you dare not deny it. Come with me, Katharine." "No," she said, shaking her head. "I am not going to spoil your life, as you have spoilt mine. You will be a great man, Paul, if you do not marry me." "Listen," he said, without heeding her. "This is the last time I shall ask you; this is the last time I shall hold you in my arms,--_so_. I shall go away after this, and you will never see me again, nor hear of me again. I shall never kiss you any more, nor ask you to come away with me, nor tell you I love you as I never loved another woman. If you come to me on your knees and beg me to love you again, I will not relent. Do you understand me? This is the last, the very last time. _Now_ what have you to say? Will you come with me?" She threw back her head and met his gaze as he bent over her. "No," she said again. He covered her face with kisses. "And now?" "No," she repeated desperately; and she crept away from him at last, and took her letter from the table and tried to walk to the door. A slippered footstep shuffled along the hall and stopped outside the library door. The next moment the Rector was in the room. "Kitty, my child, have you seen my hat anywhere? I feel convinced I put it down somewhere, and for the life of me--" He paused as he saw Paul, and held out his hand with a smile of welcome. "Delighted to see you again, my dear sir, delighted! That is to say," added the old man, looking to Katharine for assistance, "I suppose I _have_ seen you before, though for the moment I cannot quite recall your name. But my memory is getting a bad one for names, a very bad one, eh, Kitty? Anyhow, you will stop to lunch, of course; and meanwhile, if I can only find my hat--" "Daddy, it is Mr. Wilton," explained Katharine, making an effort to speak in her usual voice. Strange to say, it did not seem difficult to become usual again now that her father was in the room. "He stayed with us once, a long time ago; you remember Mr. Wilton, don't you?"