"Yes, I do," she said, emphatically, after a little pause in which she looked down at the ground. "I am only a girl, a poor weak girl, and then--" raising her fine eyes steadily to his face--"I have _my_ pride, too, you see, and it has never been so wounded before. If--if I had not loved you as I have this would have been over between us long ago. And then I excused you because you were sick and unjustly persecuted, but you are well now, Mr. Westerfelt--well enough to know what's right and just to a defenceless girl." There was now not a trace of color in his face, and he felt as if he were turning to stone. He found himself absolutely unable to meet her words with any of his own, but he had never been so completely her slave. "You must answer me one question plainly," she continued, "and I want the truth. Will you, Mr. Westerfelt?" "If I can I will, Harriet." "On your honor?" "Yes, on my honor." "Were you not leaving simply to--to get away from the--(oh, I don't know how to say it)--the--because you did not want to be near me?" He shrank back; how was he to reply to such a pointed question? "On your word of honor, Mr. Westerfelt!" There was nothing for him to do but answer in the affirmative, but it fired him with a desire to justify himself. "But it was not because I don't love you, Harriet. On the other hand, it was because I do--so much that the whole thing is simply driving me crazy. As God is my judge, I worship you--I love you as no man ever loved a woman before. But when I remember--" "I know what you are going to say," her lip curling in scorn, "and I want to help you forget my misfortune. Perhaps you will when I tell you that my feeling for you is dying a natural death, and it is dying because I no longer respect you as I did." "Oh, God! don't--_don't_ say that, Harriet!" "But I'm only telling you the truth. I would not marry you--not if you were the only man on earth--not if you were worth your weight in gold--not if you got down on your knees and asked me a thousand times." "You would not, Harriet?" "Why should I? A girl wants a husband she can lean on and go to in every trouble she has. You wouldn't fill the bill, Mr. Westerfelt. Good gracious, no!" She turned back towards the hotel, and like a man with his intelligence shaken from him by a superior force, he tried to keep at her side. In silence they reached the steps of the hotel. "You'll miss that hack if you don't hurry," she said. "Besides, you've acted as if this was a pest-house ever since mother and I nursed you here and I made such a fool of myself." "Harriet, if you do not consent to be my wife I don't know what I shall do. I want you--I want you. I love you, I can't do without you. That's God's truth. If I hesitated it was only because I was driven crazy with--"