‘I did not know,’ says she faintly. ‘I—even now it seems impossible. Don’t!’ as he makes a movement towards her. ‘Don’t misunderstand me. I know now’—her voice breaking a little—‘that it might have been. But what is impossible’—her young voice growing rounder, fuller, and unutterably wretched—‘is that I should marry you.’ ‘You think because——’ But she sweeps his words aside. ‘It is useless,’ says she, with a strength strange in one so few miles advanced upon life’s roadway, until one remembers how sad and eventful those few miles she has trodden have been—how full of miserable knowledge, how full of the cruel lesson—how to bear! ‘I am nobody, less than nobody. And you—are somebody. Do you think I would consent to ruin your life—the life of the only one who has—who has ever stood my friend?’ ‘This gratitude is absurd!’ he breaks in eagerly. ‘What have I done for you? Let you the Cottage at a fair rental!’ ‘Ah, no!’ There is irrepressible sadness in her air. She struggles with herself, holding her hands against her eyes for a little while—pressing them hard, as if to keep down her emotion. ‘I won’t—I can’t go into it,’ says she brokenly. ‘But when I forget—Mr. Wyndham’—she turns upon him passionately—‘never ask me that question again. Nothing on earth would induce me to link my name with yours.’ She pauses, and a hot blush covers her face. ‘My name!’—she repeats her words with determination, though he can see how the determination hurts her—‘I have no name.’ ‘That is all the more reason why you should take mine,’ breaks he in hotly. ‘And so destroy it. I shall not, indeed,’ says the girl firmly. Her firmness is costing her a good deal. It causes Wyndham absolute physical suffering to see the pallor of her face, the trembling of her slight form. But that he can shake her decision seems improbable. Something in her face takes him back to that terrible hour in which he first saw her, when with pale face and undaunted spirit she accepted the chance of death. Her voice, even in this hour of renunciation of all that she holds dearest, rings clear. ‘Do you think I would requite all your kindness to me by being the cause of your disinheritance by your uncle? Do you think Lord Shangarry would ever forgive your marriage with a woman of whom no one knows anything—not even her parentage?’ ‘I am willing to risk all that.’ ‘But I’—slowly—‘am not.’ ‘Ella, if you loved me——’ ‘Ah!’ A cry breaks from her, a cry that betrays her secret, and convinces him of her love for him. It is full of exquisite pain, and seems to wound her. Is it not because she loves him that—— ‘Well, then,’ says she miserably, ‘say I do not. Think I do not.’