“Because, though I love you in one way--there is only one woman whom I could love in all ways, and the woman isn’t you. Simply that. If we let this go on, you would be giving all; I, a part. This can’t be news to you. I love you because your beauty and charm fire my blood. It’s Oriental in its simplicity. Have you thought of what the end of it might possibly be?” The higher man suddenly had revolted against the readiness to seize the too willing prey, and had grown reckless in use of devastating weapons. He expected to see her facile southern nature rise in passionate anger--or her womanliness shrink in tears of disgust from the insult. He would have acted a brute part. But in either case he would have laid her love dead at her feet. He waited. The unexpected happened. She looked at him doggedly out of hardened eyes from which all the languor had faded. And then she said, in her deep voice: “I would sooner have a part of any kind of love from you than all the best love of any other man.” He remained for a moment amazed at her strength. Had he conceived an insultingly wrong impression of her? “Do you mean that you love me, in spite of the words I have just used?” “Yes, I do,” she replied. “I humbly beg your forgiveness,” he said in a low voice. There was a long silence, broken only by the ticking of the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. The apparent vastness of the great drawing-room, stiffly furnished with its cold Louis XV. furniture, increased the impression of stillness. Hugh glanced at Minna from time to time, hesitating to speak. She had changed utterly from the glowing girl who had stood up before him an hour ago to coax his admiration for her finery. Her face was set with lines of determination and stubborn character. The riddle of the woman lay open to him who could read it. The false light of the eternal, unutterably tragic missolution dawned upon the man. “I have made a horrible mistake,” he said at last. “You have--in misjudging me.” “I meant that I have used cruel words. My justification was my intention. I wish I could make you some reparation.” “That is easy,” she murmured. “Name it.” “Ask me to marry you.” Marriage! At last he was brought brutally face to face with the problem that he had hitherto left, unconsidered, to fortuity. Indeed he grew conscious that marriage had been but vaguely contemplated. He had persuaded himself into a belief in his own honour. The rottenness of the belief stared at him hideously. The nakedness of his desire appeared before him, stripped of its glamour.