"Cast that ideal out!" she said wildly and recklessly. "It is too low for you. You have passed it. You never needed it. Choose your own ideal, and forget me--forget us all. We can teach you nothing." She caught her breath as though she would have called back her own words. They were not the words she had meant to speak. They did not sound like her own. They had been put in her mouth by a force within her whose existence had been revealed to her, as a hidden volcanic mountain is revealed, by a sudden fierce upheaval, which threw off all the old rubbish loading the surface of her nature. It was only a momentary upheaval. The next minute she was trying to save herself behind the old flippant subterfuges. "I am talking nonsense!" she exclaimed, with a short angry laugh. "Then it is not true what you said?" He had urged his horse close to hers, and she could almost feel the intensity with which his eyes were fixed upon her face. That gaze stifled her laughter, drove her deeper into the danger she was striving to escape. "Yes, it is true!" she answered between her teeth. His strong hand rested upon hers and held it with a gentleness which paralyzed her strength. "If it is true, then the time has come!" he said. "The hour has struck which God ordained for us both. Beatrice, I may tell you now what you have surely known since the day we stood together before the altar--I love you. You are the first and last woman in my world." His voice pierced through to her senses through waves of roaring, confusing sound. Her heart beat till it became unbearable torture. "Do you remember that second evening?" he went on. "The priest tried to stop you at the gate of the sanctuary, but I spoke to him, and he let you pass. You asked me what I had said, but I would not tell you--not then. Now I may: 'This is the woman whom God has given me--'" She flung his hand violently from her. "You must not say that!" she cried, with desperate resolution. "You must not say that sort of thing--to me." "Why should I not? I love you." "You must not love me. I--I am to be Captain Stafford's wife." "Beatrice!" His cry of incredulous pain drove her to frantic measures. "It is true. I swear it."