“Margaret, take back what you’ve said. Consent to be my wife. I love you. For all your sorrow I love you all the more.” He saw a shudder run all through her. “It’s impossible. Don’t ask me that,” she replied unhesitatingly. Dismayed by this refusal, when a remnant of vanity in him still persuaded him that the course he took was generous, he cried out in distress: “My life’s happiness, and I’m not to ask you for it?” She moved nearer to him, and her voice took on a new sweetness as she said to him: “Another wife will give you this happiness. I’m sure of it. I want it for you.” “There’s no other woman but you in my eyes.” “No, no, it’s impossible. Don’t torment me.” “Impossible? Why, Margaret? Why discourage me? You don’t love me? One day perhaps I shall know how to make you love me. You shake your head? Good God, Margaret, will you send me away without a reason?” She seemed to search for an answer, and hesitated; then found a way round the difficulty. He watched anxiously for what she should say. “I’m not the same girl I was last year,” she began. “I don’t understand.” “I’ve no dot any more.” “Is that it? Margaret, I don’t deserve to have you treat me like this. There’s something in you, in your eyes, like a radiant flame of life. When I look at you I feel courage in me, a desire for good, and a disdain for all the petty satisfactions that material things can give. Beside this, this faith that you give me, which will be my strength, what is money?” “And if to-morrow----” As she did not go on with the phrase he repeated: “If to-morrow?” “If a still greater misfortune awaits us to-morrow, if to-morrow my brother Maurice is declared guilty?” “I came to-day on account of that danger. I wanted to claim the honour of supporting your father to-morrow at the trial like a son. I had to see you to-day.” “Ah!” she murmured, thunderstruck. He could see from the tone of this simple exclamation that all the indifference she had shown him was falling away at last. On her pale face, whose every expression he had followed, he distinguished suddenly sympathy and gratitude, perhaps something further still. Happiness was there--uncertain, clouded, but still there. And its presence stirred his heart. Margaret fortified him in this hope by holding out her hand to him. “I thank you, Raymond,” she said, not afraid to call him by his name as she used to do. “I am touched, deeply touched.” They were not quite the words he had expected from her. He watched her in an anxious ecstasy, entreatingly. As she kept silent, he murmured timidly: “Why thank me, when I love you? It seems to me that loving you is worth more than---- Margaret, will you really be my wife?” he added, like a sigh. There were compassion and sorrow in her beautiful pale face as she answered: “Raymond, I can’t.” “You can’t? Then--then you are in love with some one else?” “Ah, my friend!”