“It is my right to know,” she repeated.

“I know it,” he again interrupted.  “But I cannot tell you.”

“You have not considered me, Chris,” she went on gently.

“I know, I know,” he broke in.

“You cannot have considered me.  You do not know what I have to bear from my people because of you.”

“I did not think they felt so very unkindly toward me,” he said bitterly.

“It is true.  They can scarcely tolerate you.  They do not show it to you, but they almost hate you.  It is I who have had to bear all this.  It was not always so, though.  They liked you at first as . . . as I liked you.  But that was four years ago.  The time passed by—­a year, two years; and then they began to turn against you.  They are not to be blamed.  You spoke no word.  They felt that you were destroying my life.  It is four years, now, and you have never once mentioned marriage to them.  What were they to think?  What they have thought, that you were destroying my life.”

As she talked, she continued to pass her fingers caressingly through his hair, sorrowful for the pain that she was inflicting.

“They did like you at first.  Who can help liking you?  You seem to draw affection from all living things, as the trees draw the moisture from the ground.  It comes to you as it were your birthright.  Aunt Mildred and Uncle Robert thought there was nobody like you.  The sun rose and set in you.  They thought I was the luckiest girl alive to win the love of a man like you.  ’For it looks very much like it,’ Uncle Robert used to say, wagging his head wickedly at me.  Of course they liked you.  Aunt Mildred used to sigh, and look across teasingly at Uncle, and say, ’When I think of Chris, it almost makes me wish I were younger myself.’  And Uncle would answer, ‘I don’t blame you, my dear, not in the least.’  And then the pair of them would beam upon me their congratulations that I had won the love of a man like you.

“And they knew I loved you as well.  How could I hide it?—­this great, wonderful thing that had entered into my life and swallowed up all my days!  For four years, Chris, I have lived only for you.  Every moment was yours.  Waking, I loved you.  Sleeping, I dreamed of you.  Every act I have performed was shaped by you, by the thought of you.  Even my thoughts were moulded by you, by the invisible presence of you.  I had no end, petty or great, that you were not there for me.”

“I had no idea of imposing such slavery,” he muttered.

“You imposed nothing.  You always let me have my own way.  It was you who were the obedient slave.  You did for me without offending me.  You forestalled my wishes without the semblance of forestalling them, so natural and inevitable was everything you did for me.  I said, without offending me.  You were no dancing puppet.  You made no fuss.  Don’t you see?  You did not seem to do things at all.  Somehow they were always there, just done, as a matter of course.