of her lover, who was beside himself with the success of his attack upon this stately, beautiful, mysterious beauty.
Presently she drew herself away from him and assumed an air of entire self-possession.
"Philip, I hope you may learn to forgive me for this weakness, this temptation to forget a bitter past, in an unlooked-for visitation of sweetness. Nay, listen, do not speak. You are young and impulsive. You will have time to forget. The world is all before you, full of glorious possibilities, love, fame, happiness. For me, there is but a hard, thorny road, and I must tread the path alone. If you could know all, you would say it is so; you would never seek to alter it; you would indeed shudder at the depth of the precipice you have stood upon; stand aghast at the escape my self-denial gives you, for I could love you; yes, not alone for the sake of the past, but for your own; but and here I beg you to take note of my words you might as well think of allying yourself with the worst woman your fancy can depict as with me."
"You are saying this to disenchant me; you love another : or"
" I am not saying it for any purpose but to save you and myself from a crime, a sin, and you from a future of humiliation. I do not love anyone; I am a widow; I was widowed from my love on the eve of my marriage; I was only a girl, and there are sufferings in this world worse than death, humiliations worse than the gallows."
Her lips quivered as she spoke, and the expression of terror and anger, of something between madness and grief, between defiance and vengeance, which Philip had noticed in that face at the opera, seemed to convulse her. All this, instead of discouraging Philip, stirred in him the defiant desire for some opportunity to show to the woman either the madness or the sincerity of his passion.
"I care not what you are, what you have been, what
