As she spoke she clutched at his arms, his hands, his breast, and at her own throat, as if something was strangling her. He did not answer her reproaches, for he knew well what they were. They were the bitter cry of her great love, her great misery, and her great jealousy of the world--the merciless and mysterious power that was luring him away. After awhile his silence touched her, and she came up to him, full of remorse, and said, “No, no, Philip, you have nothing to reproach yourself with. You did not deceive me at all. I deceived myself. It was my own fault. I led you on--I know that. And yet I've been saying these cruel things. You'll forgive me, though, will you not? A girl can't help it sometimes, Philip. Are you crying? You are not crying, are you? Kiss me, Philip, and forgive me. You can do that, can't you?” She asked like a child, with her face up and her lips apart. He was about to yield, and was reaching forward to touch her forehead, when suddenly the child became the woman, and she leapt upon his breast, and held him fervently, her blood surging, her bosom exulting, her eyes flaming, and her passionate voice crying, “Philip, you are mine. No, I will not release you. I don't care about your plans--you shall give them up. I don't care about your trust--you shall break it. I don't care about Pete coming--let him come. The world can do without you--I cannot. You are mine, Philip, and I am yours, and nobody else's, and never will be. You _must_ come back to me, sooner or later, if you go away. I know it, I feel it, it's in my heart. But I'll never let you go. I can't, I can't. Haven't I a right to you? Yes, I have a right. Don't you remember?... Can you ever forget?... My _husband!_” The last word came muffled from his breast, where she had buried her head in the convulsions of her trembling at the moment when her modesty went down in the fierce battle with a higher pain. But the plea which seemed to give her the right to cling the closer made the man to draw apart. It was the old deep tragedy of human love--the ancient inequality in the bond of man and woman. What she had thought her conquest had been her vanquishment. He could not help, it--her last word had killed everything. “Oh, God,” he groaned, “that is the worst of all.” “Philip,” she cried, “what do you mean?” “I mean that neither can I marry you, nor can you marry Pete. You would carry to him your love of me, and bit by bit he would find it out, and it would kill him. It would kill you, too, for you have called me your husband, and you could never, never, never forget it.” “I don't want to marry Pete,” she said. “If I'm not to marry you, I don't want to marry any one. But do you mean that I must not marry at all--that I never can now that----” The word failed her, and his answer came thick and indistinct--“Yes.” “And you, Philip? What about yourself?”