"Do you think it is easy for me to go," she cried passionately, "to give you up when I love you! You should help me, not make it harder. Isn't it better to part now while we have nothing to regret than to live with a wrong between us?" "But what wrong will be between us? Surely that boyish mistake need not blight both our lives." "Can we help it?" she asked sadly. "We will help it! Are we merely puppets then, to be bandied about helplessly? I told her I loved her; it is no longer true, and why is the pledge that followed binding?" "It is not simply that you gave her your word," Helen returned, struggling bravely with herself; "it is that you made her love you, and that obligation you can never shake off. Oh, it is because you are too noble to take a woman's love and then trample upon it, that I love you--that you fill my heart." She poured out the words, her eyes blazing, her splendid form dilated, her arms involuntarily extended towards him. He took her into his embrace; not hastily, not wildly; but with a slow, irresistible movement that had in it something of solemnity. He showered kisses upon her hair, her forehead, her lips; he pressed her to his bosom as if he would absorb her into himself. "My darling, my darling," he said, in a hoarse, fiery whisper, "I cannot give you up! Think how lonely I am; how I love you!" She put up her face and kissed him with a long, clinging kiss; then she freed herself from his arms. They stood face to face, her eyes appealing, until his glance fell before hers. "Yes," he said in a voice so low that she bent forward to listen, "yes; you must be right." "I am right," she responded sadly, "I have fought against it too much not to be sure of that." "It is an odd way of proving my love for you to give you up," continued Herman, with a new accent of bitterness in his voice. "Oh, the folly of that boyish passion!" He strode away from her, as she leaned panting against a modeling stand. The darkness was gathering so rapidly that when he turned back his face came out of the gloom like a surprise. "My reward," he said, "must be that you love me; but that very reward makes it harder to deserve it. I am sure that we would be wiser and happier if we had no scruples to hamper us." "But we have," was her response; "to take your own words, we are not mere puppets." Again he walked away from her, and for a few moments there was no sound but that of his heavy footsteps, which seemed to make the silence more solemn and penetrating. "I will do whatever you ask," he burst out suddenly. "I will even marry her if you wish." "I ask nothing. It is not I but your convictions you should follow. I am not even able to advise. Your own instincts are better and nobler than any thing I can say to you." She stopped and choked back a sob. "Oh, Grant, it is so hard!" she cried.