"Conscience," he reminded her as a deep flush spread over the face that had been pale, "so long as there remained a chance for you to succeed, I made no suggestion that might unsettle you. My love for you has never changed or wavered. It has incalculably grown. But, until to-night, have I in any manner assumed the guise or asked the prerogatives of a lover?" "Until to-night," she retorted, "I've never appealed to you for help. Now I tell you of fires I'm trying to control--and you are only setting matches to them." "I am begging you to conquer this undertow of your heredity, and to see things as they are, without any spirit of false martyrdom. I am calling upon you to rouse yourself out of this fanatic trance--and to live! By your own confession you love me in every way that a woman of flaming inner fires can love. Under all your glacial reserve and perfect propriety you have deeps of passion--and you know that _he_ can never stir them. You say you will conquer this love for me. Have you overcome it in these three years? What has this travesty of a hopeless marriage given you, but a pallid existence of curbed emotions and a stifled life?" He had begun speaking with a forced calmness that gave a monotony to his voice, but the sincerity of his plea had brought a fire into it that mingled persuasively with the soothing softness of the voice itself. Conscience felt herself perilously swept by a torrent of thoughts that were all of the senses; the stifled senses of which he had just spoken, straining hard for release from their curbing. His splendid physical fitness; the almost gladiatorial alertness of his body; the glowing eagerness of his face were all arguing for him with an urgency greater than his words. This was the man who should have been her mate. Perhaps it would be better to end the interview; to tell him that she could no longer listen to assaults upon her beliefs and her marriage--but she had come out here with the militant determination to fight the matter out, and it was not yet fought out. She must let him make his attacks and meet them without flinching. Into the tones with which she began her reply came the softness and calmness of a dedication to that purpose. Stuart recognized the tone with something like despair. Against this antagonism of the martyr spirit he might break all his darts of argument, to no avail.