"Beatrix, I am twice as old as you are, but I love you to madness! I have hated Cyril Wentworth in my bitter jealousy, but that is all past. Thank God, you love him no longer--you are free! Can you love _me_, Beatrix? Will you be my wife?" Laurel Vane almost reeled with the suddenness of this perfect joy that had come upon her. She was face to face with the great temptation of her life, but, oh, how powerless, through her passionate love, to fight against it! CHAPTER XXIII. Deep emotion overpowered Laurel's speech for a moment. Her lips parted as if to speak, but closed again without a sound. Her fair head drooped like a beautiful flower too heavily laden with dew. It had come upon her like a great shock that St. Leon Le Roy loved her--loved her, the false Beatrix Gordon, the perjured girl living a deliberate lie beneath his roof. She called it by its worst name to herself, even though she flinched from it, for she had, as Clarice Wells said of her, a habit of calling things by their right names. To her a "spade" was a "spade." She had the moral courage to recognize her sin, but this love had made her a coward. She could not confess the truth. For the sake of this man she had risked all. She could not put his love from her now. Yet his next words stabbed her with keenest pain. "For the first time, Beatrix, I feel like thanking God for Maud's falsity, since it has left me free to win you, my true, angel-hearted girl!" "True! angel-hearted--oh, my God!" she shuddered to herself, and a longing came over her to be all that he thought her, honest, innocent, true. Should she confess all, and trust to his great love to pity and pardon her? She lifted her dark, wistful eyes to his glowing, eager face. "If you had not loved me perhaps you would have forgiven the wrong Mrs. Merivale did you," she said, anxiously. The stern lines she dreaded came around his lips again. "I forgave her long ago--as long ago as my fancy for her died!" he said. "But I can never respect her, nor even like her again. She deceived me. I can never forget that! Women should be little lower than the angels, Beatrix. "'A perfect creature, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command, And yet a spirit still and bright, With something of an angel's light.'" Wordsworth's ideal is mine, Beatrix. I could never again love a woman who had deceived me. Once fallen from her lofty pedestal, the broken idol could never be restored again!" He was unconsciously warning her, but he only frightened her. She said to herself that he would never forgive her if she told him at this late day how she had deceived him. And she could not do it. She would not risk it. She loved him too dearly. She would have his love while she could, whether it lasted for a year or a day. "Why did you deceive her this evening?" she asked, gaining courage as she made her wild resolve. "You were so devoted and attentive she thought she had won you back."