"Look here!" he cried hoarsely. "Listen to me for a moment. This may be the last time I shall see you--it will be the last time, if you refuse what I ask. If I didn't know that you love me I wouldn't worry you. I shouldn't want you if you did not want me. But you do. I don't care a damn about your marriage. If you'll trust me, and come to me, you shall never regret it. Oh! my little love!--my sweetheart! Don't refuse what I ask. It means everything to me. Say you will, dear?" "Oh, don't!" she entreated him again, and shrank back from the passion in his eyes. But his arms were about her; they held her tightly. "Are you afraid?" he said, his face grim and set. "I'm dangerous to you to-night, and you know it. Here we are alone in the night together. What is to prevent me from taking what I want? Why should I consider your scruples--or anything? I am going out to that inferno... Why shouldn't I seize my good hour before I go? What's to prevent me? What's to prevent me from kissing you now?" He leaned over her and rained kisses on her mouth, kisses that seared her lips, that almost stifled her. He was giving rein to his passion. A quality both wild and lawless sprang to life in him and overrode his better nature for the time. Disappointed hope and baulked desire drove him to a frenzy of excess which in saner moments he would not have believed himself capable of. He would have been horrified at this complete loss of control had he been able to appreciate it. But a spirit of recklessness held him before which his commonsense melted like snow consumed by the fires which passion lit in his breast. It occurred to him while he held her, crushed and trembling, in his arms and kissed her madly, that he was a fool to attempt to reason with her. A girl nursed in the washy traditions of her class, as Prudence was, should not be hampered with the responsibility of choice: he ought to decide for her--ought to take full responsibility for the step he was urging her to accede to. It wasn't fair to burden her conscience with a sense of willing concession. That was where he had made the mistake. He was asking too much of her. "Little love," he whispered against her lips, "don't be afraid. There is nothing to fear in love; and I love you better than life. You are going with me to-night. No, don't speak! You are nervous and unstrung. You don't know what you want. Leave this to me. I've got a car waiting in the village. We'll travel up to town in it; and later, when I am drafted across the water, you'll go to France as my wife, and live there until I can be with you again." He drew back his head to look at her, and his face softened to a wonderful tenderness; there were tears in his eyes. After a barely perceptible pause, he resumed more quietly: