She made no answer--what answer was there to make? And he strode on by her side in silence for full ten minutes. At last she was forced to speak. "Mr. Headley, recollect that this conversation has gone too far for us to avoid coming to some definite understanding--" "Then it shall, Miss St. Just. Then it shall, once and for all: formally and deliberately, it shall end now. Suppose,--I only say suppose,--that I could, without failing in my own honour, my duty to my calling, make myself such a name among good men that, poor parson though I be, your family need be ashamed of nothing about me, save my poverty? Tell me, now and for ever, could it be possible--" He stopped. She walked on, silent, in her turn. "Say no, as a matter of course, and end it!" said he, bitterly. She drew a long breath, as if heaving off a weight. "I cannot--dare not say it." "It? Which of the two? yes, or no?" She was silent. He stopped, and spoke calmly and slowly. "Say that again, and tell me that I am not dreaming. You? the admired! the worshipped! the luxurious!--and no blame to you that you are what you were born--could you endure a little parsonage, the teaching village school-children, tending dirty old women, and petty cares the whole year round?" "Mr. Headley," answered she, slowly and calmly, in her turn, "I could endure a cottage,--a prison, I fancy, at moments,--to escape from this world, of which I am tired, which will soon be tired of me: from women who envy me, impute to me ambitions as base as their own; from men who admire--not me, for they do not know me, and never will--but what in me --I hate them!--will give them pleasure. I hate it all, despise it all; despise myself for it all every morning when I wake! What does it do for me, but rouse in me the very parts of my own character which are most despicable, most tormenting? If it goes on, I feel I could become as frivolous, as mean, aye, as wicked as the worst. You do not know--you do not know--. I have envied the nuns their convents. I have envied Selkirk his desert island. I envy now the milkmaids there below: anything to escape and be in earnest, anything for some one to teach me to be of use! Yes, this cholera--and this war--though only, only its coming shadow has passed over me,--and your words too--" cried she, and stopped and hesitated, as if afraid to tell too much--"they have wakened me--to a new life--at least to the dream of a new life!" "Have you not Major Campbell?" said Headley, with a terrible effort of will. "Yes--but has he taught me? He is dear, and good, and wise; but he is too wise, too great for me. He plays with me as a lion might with a mouse; he is like a grand angel far above in another planet, who can pity and advise, but who cannot--What am I saying?" and she covered her face with her hand. She dropped her glove as she did so. Headley picked it up and gave it to her: as he did so their hands met; and their hands did not part again.