"Swear," she had written, not once, nor twice; "swear that you love no other woman; that you have never loved another woman; that I fill all your thoughts!" Those were easy oaths, and true; but they did not content her. It was not enough that no other woman had a lien upon his past: his whole existence must be proscribed for her. "Tell me," she prayed, "that I shall be everything to you always! It kills me to think that any love could move you after mine. I cannot have renounced my pride, my honour, my self-respect, for less than that." He could but smile unmirthfully at her renunciations. His were privileges, it seemed, to her thinking, that any man might sigh for; though apparently they were to include a monastic seclusion from the world of sense, a virginity devoted, not to her passion--and for passion a man might be content to live or die--but to her sentimental fancies. "Say," she pleaded, unsatisfied by his replies, which to such extortionate demands could be but vague, "say that I alone of all the women in the world can ever satisfy all your longings; that it would seem a degrading sacrilege to let any other woman come after me even in your thoughts! Tell me, even though I die, that my memory must keep you true." He gazed at that for a day to get his breath, but the delay was all too long for hers. "Write, write," she panted, on the morrow; "I cannot live unless I hear from you. Have you no feeling for a woman's dignity that you can give me over in this way to its scorn? I fling everything that I possess before you, and you find it not even worth acknowledgment." What could he say? How could he answer her? Her blindness was sublime, detestable, ridiculous, as you were pleased to view it; but to blindness one could never refuse a hand. Distressed by a necessity of which he had been the unwitting cause, Terence extended his. But his ignorance mitigated his foreboding; he still trusted to time. Time, however, brought him but little comfort. If her letters became saner, it was only since he had thrown her insanity a sop. When they met a month later his difficulties were increased. At first she had entreated him to win her respect by a display of repression. He was to be as other men were not, to keep her staunch by an undreamed-of virtue. The lover's heart must animate to her perception only the unimpeachable kindness of the friend. She had her wish, but had it, perhaps, in a perfection for which she was not prepared. She seemed determined to leave no doubts as to his fortitude. She hung upon him so literally that he had to exert not moral fibre only to support her. She drooped like a wreath about his shoulders, while he gazed, grim and ashamed, upon her hair. But she drew no consolation from his strength. It was not strength, she told him, but indifference; she had asked for a sentry, and he had given her a statue.