“She is drawing you and you are drawing her, and each is too strong to release the other. I believe that to be true. Both bodies and souls do it. They are not separate things. They move on their way as the stars do--they move on their way.” As he spoke, Mount Dunstan's eyes looked into his fixedly. Then they turned aside and looked down upon the mantel against which he was leaning. He aimlessly picked up his pipe and laid it down again. He was paler than before, but he said no single word. “You think your reasons for holding aloof from her are the reasons of a man.” Mr. Penzance's voice sounded to him remote. “They are the reasons of a man's pride--but that is not the strongest thing in the world. It only imagines it is. You think that you cannot go to her as a luckier man could. You think nothing shall force you to speak. Ask yourself why. It is because you believe that to show your heart would be to place yourself in the humiliating position of a man who might seem to her and to the world to be a base fellow.” “An impudent, pushing, base fellow,” thrust in Mount Dunstan fiercely. “One of a vulgar lot. A thing fancying even its beggary worth buying. What has a man--whose very name is hung with tattered ugliness--to offer?” Penzance's hand was still on his shoulder and his look at him was long. “His very pride,” he said at last, “his very obstinacy and haughty, stubborn determination. Those broken because the other feeling is the stronger and overcomes him utterly.” A flush leaped to Mount Dunstan's forehead. He set both elbows on the mantel and let his forehead fall on his clenched fists. And the savage Briton rose in him. “No!” he said passionately. “By God, no!” “You say that,” said the older man, “because you have not yet reached the end of your tether. Unhappy as you are, you are not unhappy enough. Of the two, you love yourself the more--your pride and your stubbornness.” “Yes,” between his teeth. “I suppose I retain yet a sort of respect--and affection--for my pride. May God leave it to me!” Penzance felt himself curiously exalted; he knew himself unreasoningly passing through an oddly unpractical, uplifted moment, in whose impelling he singularly believed. “You are drawing her and she is drawing you,” he said. “Perhaps you drew each other across seas. You will stand here together and you will tell her of this--on this very spot.” Mount Dunstan changed his position and laughed roughly, as if to rouse himself. He threw out his arm in a big, uneasy gesture, taking in the room. “Oh, come,” he said. “You talk like a seer. Look about you. Look! I am to bring her here!” “If it is the primeval thing she will not care. Why should she?” “She! Bring a life like hers to this! Or perhaps you mean that her own wealth might make her surroundings becoming--that a man would endure that?” “If it is the primeval thing, YOU would not care. You would have forgotten that you two had ever lived an hour apart.”