"Yes, just that, and finally that. She is your mother, and you love her; but you are a human soul as well as she, with a right to healthy, normal life. It is contrary to the law of progress to sacrifice the young to the old. Your mother's comfort has been your undoing, and I cannot for an instant agree to your submission of this question to her. You must assert your right to yourself, and she must surrender her authority to me, and she must leave you for a time. I would say this even if my own mother spoke to me through you. Your struggles tear my heart, and your mother's presence only prolongs your sufferings." "You must not blame her," she loyally insisted. "I am to blame. My guides tell me that if I would surrender myself completely to them I would find peace," she ended, slowly, sadly, as if in confession. "Peace! Yes, the peace of the epileptic or the mad. No, no, joy and health do not lie that way. If I were the scientist merely, I would say, 'Keep on, and I will stand by to observe your struggles.' But I am not, I am something else than scientist. It angers and agonizes me to see you tortured. I cannot endure it and I will not. In order that I may do all that I hope for, you must give yourself wholly into my care." He was speaking now in a low and throbbing voice, oblivious of time and space. "I must be something more than physician or friend. I have been saying 'must' to you, but I am, after all, a very strange autocrat. My power is dependent on you." Then, in answer to her questioning eyes, he hurried on: "I love you, dear girl, and if you find you can trust yourself to me, fully, in this way, then I am sure of victory. Can you say this? I hope you can, for then I will have the most powerful magician in all the world fighting on my side. Are you able to do this? Can you say you love me and that you will come to me, trusting in me as in a husband?" No one was astir in the car but the porter, but had it been filled with clamoring tongues and seeking, impertinent eyes, she would have been conscious only of his tender glance, his earnest voice, and the momentous question being pressed upon her. She struggled to speak, but could not, and he hastened on: "I will be honest with you. Your mother does not trust me. She knows and resents my feeling towards you. She knows also that I consider her separation from you necessary, for a time, and is hurt and saddened by it; but she will come to see the necessity of this measure. I do not ask an immediate answer--though I wish your heart were mine this minute--but I do want you to know that from the first moment I saw you your life has been a part of mine. I could not forget you, though I tried to do so, and I will not now give you up." She still sat like an exquisite statue of meditation, looking out into the night, benumbed and breathless with the passion his words evoked. Suddenly she turned and vehemently exclaimed: "You ought not to ask me this. I'm not fit to be your wife."