“Do I deserve you?” “O, yes!” “Then would you deprive me of my desert?” “Eugene, my heart says yes; my reason says no.” “The heart before the reason, Mary.” “I am afraid that, months or years hence, when this step cannot be recalled, you will see me as I am. You will think of the odious events which once separated us, and wish you had passed me by on the other side.” “You wrong me, Mary.” “It would not be unnatural, Eugene. You know what a break there was in the love which began while we were children. Even now you wish this had not happened.” “I do,” replied Eugene, candidly. “If I could to-day be reduced to poverty, and possess you as you were before Buckstone stepped into your path, I would take the poverty, and rejoicingly clasp my treasure to my heart.” Mary shrank from him. “Then you do not regard me as you did before?” said she, sadly, and with quivering lip. “I love you the same; do not shrink from me. I have only said that I would give the poor boon of wealth to have you as you were. This cannot be. Mary, I am cool, self-possessed; I am not carried away by any silly enthusiasm. I have thought calmly and dispassionately of our marriage. I have compared you with all the women I know--with all I have seen here and abroad. You are beautiful; if it were for your beauty alone I sought you, I could distrust myself. It is not. You have a Christian heart. You were my ideal of a woman. You are still. What has happened does not affect the qualities for which I seek you. Morally, mentally, spiritually, you are the same. I love you in spite of what has come between us. I cannot love another. I could not help looking coldly upon the fairest and most accomplished, even after I knew that you were the wife of another. If I had been doomed never to see you again, I should still have cherished the Mary I loved, and never thought of supplying her place with another. I feel what I say; I mean it. I am not making a special plea; I am only telling the simple truth.” She did not shrink from him now. “Could I have known that you still loved me,” replied she, as he took her hand again, “I should not have done violence to my own heart as I did. I would have slept in the woods, and fed upon acorns, rather than be false to the love that was in my heart. I thought you repelled me. I gave you up, and believed that I had conquered my heart.” “It was my fault; but let us not speak of these things. They are loathsome to me. Let me atone for my error.” “I wish you to know the whole truth. The past is more painful to me than it can be to you.” “Let the dead bury their dead; let us never allude to these things again.” “Never, Eugene.” “You are mine, Mary?” “I cannot say no, and I dare not say yes.” His arm encircled her waist, as she leaned her head upon his shoulder. There were tears in her eyes--why they came she could not tell. “Do not rob me of this highest earthly joy, Mary.”