"Yes," she says, with a heavy sigh. "I must at least give that. The best part of me and my life is laid in the grave of my little child. Often I think I shall never feel glad again, but after to-night I leave it to you whether you are to make my life harder for me, or help me to struggle against myself." His eyes gleam with momentary anger, petulance, pride. "You give me a hard enough task, I hope," he says passionately. "And yet your last words hold all the tempting that could possibly beset a man. Why should I save you from yourself? By heaven if you loved me, if you only knew _how_ I love you, you would not count the cost of anything that stood between us and our happiness!" "Would it be happiness?" answers Lauraine. "I think _not_, Keith. Is a guilty love ever happy? Does it ever last? If it did the world would not teem with forsaken women, nor the rivers of our great cities bear such burdens of shame and despair." "You do not know me, if you doubt. Have I not been true to you, since, boy and girl, we stood together, and played at sweethearts in the old Grange garden at Silverthorne? Till I die I shall remember you, and love you, Lorry." "Other men have said the same, and have forgotten." "Other men! Yes; but you surely know me well enough to believe me." "It is because I believe you that I wish to save you deeper pain. You cannot command your feelings, and I--I must not listen to you now. It is wrong, shameful." He moves impatiently. "Your words are very cruel. But to me you have always been that. You could not be true to me even for a few years." She shudders as if a blow had struck her. "It is ungenerous to speak of that now; you know the fault was not all mine." But Keith is in no mood to listen to her. His blood is on fire, his heart is hot and angry, and he feels that sort of rage within him that longs to spend itself in bitter words and unjust reproaches, even to one he loves as dearly as he loves Lauraine. There is a sort of savage satisfaction in making her suffer too, and he pours out a fury of wrath and reproach as she stands there mute and pale and still. "I am not ice, like yourself," he says, in conclusion, "Other women love, and forget all else for love. You--you are too cold and prudent. I am young, and you have wrecked my whole life, and given me nothing but misery. I wish I had died a thousand deaths before I had seen you!" A shiver as of intense cold passes over her. She knows Keith's wild temper of old, but she had not thought it was in him to speak as he had spoken to her. She forgets that a great love borders almost on hate, so intense may be its passions, its longing, its despair.