Miles obeyed her with bewilderment. What was she going to say? She would not marry him, and yet he had not deceived himself! She was deadly pale, and he might have heard the beating of her heart; but she was quite firm, and she turned her steady eyes upon him unfalteringly. "There is only one thing you can say to me," he said, "if you persevere in forbidding me to hope--that is, to send me out of your sight for ever." "Perhaps," was her reply; "but listen. I have said you don't deceive yourself, and I mean it. I know you love me; I know what perfect sincerity there is in you--hush! let me speak--and I--I do love you--you have not mistaken me, I have not misled you." "Then what does anything else matter?" said Miles, and he caught her hands and kissed them unresisted, unrebuked. "With that assurance, Grace, surely you will not refuse me?" "I must," she answered. "Have patience with me. I will tell you why. It is for your own sake." "My own sake!" he exclaimed passionately; "you deprive me of all hope and happiness for my own sake! I shall need patience indeed to understand that." "It is true, nevertheless. I could not many you, Miles Challoner, without doing you a great injury; and I love you too well, much more and better than myself, to do that. Take that assurance, and believe that nothing can shake my determination. My fate is decided, my way of life is quite fixed. I shall never be your wife, never, never, never!"--his face was hidden in his hands, he did not see the suffering which broke all control and showed itself plainly in her every feature--"but I shall never love you less, or anyone but you." The low distinct tones of her voice thrilled him with a horrid sense of hopelessness. She spoke as one who had taken an irrevocable resolution. "What do you mean?" he said. "You must tell me more than this. What do you mean by doing me an injury? I protest I have not the faintest notion of your meaning. It cannot be--" He hesitated, and she took up his words. "Because you are a gentleman of old name and a responsible position in society, and I am a singer, an actress a woman with no name and no station, you would say. Yes, it is precisely for this cause, which you think impossible. I know you don't regard any of these things, but the world does; and the man I love shall never be censured by the world for me." How well it was, she thought, how fortunate, that such a real genuine difficulty did exist; that she could give some explanation which he might be induced to receive.