"It's not as though this business of marriage were a natural institution," he argued; "it's purely artificial. When a man and a woman are honestly in love they don't bother with that aspect of the relationship. They just want one another. Marriage is merely a result attendant on the natural impulse. I came home with the idea of marrying you, and I find you no longer free. That fact maddens me; its fills me with despair. But it doesn't alter the initial fact that I want you. That desire is no less keen than before I heard of your marriage. Prudence, dearest, be true to yourself. You love me. Come with me-- now. I came down here for that purpose--to take you away with me." He pulled her down on the stile beside him and put his arm about her and held her close to him. She did not repulse him. She felt strangely little angry at what he said. She was too greatly moved to experience the lesser emotions which a sense of outraged virtue might have called forth at another time. She had hurt this man badly; and she felt too sorry for him to resent in indignant terms the proposal which he made. He wanted her, wanted her urgently; and they loved one another. Why had she allowed the years to separate them so irrevocably? "You don't answer," he said, and brought his face nearer to here and looked her in the eyes. "You don't answer me." His voice shook with hardly repressed passion; his whole form shook. She felt the shoulder which pressed against her shoulder tremble, and the hand which gripped hers trembled also, and was burning to the touch. "You don't answer," he said again hoarsely. "My dear," she said, "what is there to say?" And broke down again and wept. CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT. There was a great deal which she might have said, Steele thought, as he held her sobbing in his arms, and tried to convince her that happiness for both of them lay in following the path along which he sought to direct her steps. He wanted her so; and they loved one another--two all-sufficient reasons, as he saw matters, for throwing such deterrent considerations as honour and duty to the winds. They owed a duty to themselves as well as to others, he argued; and a loveless marriage was dishonouring. She ought not to submit to the spoiling of both their lives from motives of no higher consideration than fear of the world's censure. "What does it matter to us what any one thinks?" he asked. "This ruling of one's life by the world's opinion is ridiculous. Here we are, you and I, in love with one another, wanting one another. Life is very sweet and precious while one loves. Prudence, but it isn't worth more than a sigh when one is denied love. I want to make you mine before I leave for France. We'll have our time together. Then, when I come back, I will take you with me--to a new country where no one knows anything about us. Dear, we shall be so happy."