"Why not?" he cried eagerly, raising her hand to his lips, and kissing it with fervour. "If you tell me you love me, Elma, all the rest must come. Say that, and you say all. So long as I've gained your heart, I don't care for anything." Elma drew her hand away with stately reserve. "I mean it, Mr. Waring," she said slowly, sitting down on the bank, and gasping a little for air, just as she had done in the tunnel. "I really mean it. I LIKED you in the train that day; I was GRATEFUL to you in the accident; I knew I LOVED you the afternoon we met at the Holkers'. There, I've told you that plainly--more plainly than I thought I ever could tell it to any man on earth--because we knew one another so well when we thought we were dying side by side, and because--because I can see you really love me.... Well, it can never be. I can never marry you." She gazed at him wistfully. Cyril sat down by her side, and talked it all over with her from a hundred points of view. He pressed his suit hard, till Elma felt, if words could win, her painter would have won her. But she couldn't yield, she said for HIS sake a thousand times more than for her own, she must never marry. As the man grew more earnest the girl in turn grew more frank and confiding. She could never marry HIM, to be sure, she said fervently, but then she could never, never, never marry any one else. If she married at all she would marry Cyril. He took her hand again. Without one shadow of resistance she let him take it and hold it. Yes, yes, he might love her, if he liked, no harm at all in that; and SHE, she would always, always love him. All her life through, she cried, letting her passionate southern nature get the better of her at last, she would love him every hour of every day in the year, and love him only. But she could never marry him. Why, she must never say. It was no use his trying to read her secret. He must never find it out; never, never, never. But she, for her part, could never forget it. So Cyril, eagerly pressing his suit with every art he knew, was forced in the end to content himself with that scanty measure. She would love him, she would write to him, even; but she would never marry him. At last the time came when they must really part, or she would be late for lunch, and mamma would know all; mamma would read everything. He looked her wistfully in the face. Elma held out her lips, obedient to that mute demand, with remorseful blush of maidenly shame on her cheek. "Only once," she murmured. "Just to seal our compact. For the first and last time. You go away to-morrow." "That was BEFORE you said you loved me," Cyril cried with delight, emboldened by success. "Mayn't I stay on now, just one little week longer?" At the proposal, Elma drew back her face in haste before he had time to kiss it, and answered, in a very serious voice--