She pushed away my arm.  “They are all the same,” she said, as though to herself.

“Yes, all the same,” I said.  “There is no man who would not love you, here or anywhere.”

“To how many have you said that?” she asked me, frowning, as though absorbed, studious, intent on some problem.

“To some,” I said to her, honestly.  “But it was never thus.”

She curled her lip, scorning the truth which she had asked now that she had it.  “And if any other woman were here it would be the same.  It is because I am here, because we are alone, because I am a woman—­ah, that is neither wise nor brave nor good of you!”

“That is not true!  Were it any other woman, yes, what you say might be true in one way.  But I love you not because you are a woman.  It is because you are Ellen.  You would be the only woman in the world, no matter where we were nor how many were about us.  Though I could choose from all the world, it would be the same!”

She listened with her eyes far away, thinking, thinking.  “It is the old story,” she sighed.

“Yes, the old story,” I said.  “It is the same story, the old one.  There are the witnesses, the hills, the sky.”

“You seem to have thought of such things,” she said to me, slowly.  “I have not thought.  I have simply lived along, enjoying life, not thinking.  Do we love because we are but creatures?  I cannot be loved so—­I will not be!  I will not submit that what I have sometimes dreamed shall be so narrow as this.  John Cowles, a woman must be loved for herself, not for her sex, by some one who is a man, but who is beside—­”

“Oh, I have said all that.  I loved you the first time I saw you—­the first time, there at the dance.”

“And forgot, and cared for another girl the next day.’  She argued that all over again.

“That other girl was you,” I once more reiterated.

“And again you forgot me.”

“And again what made me forget you was yourself!  Each time you were that other girl, that other woman.  Each time I have seen you you have been different, and each time I have loved you over again.  Each day I see you now you are different, Ellen, and each day I love you more.  How many times shall I solve this same problem, and come to the same answer.  I tell you, the thing is ended and done for me.”

“It is easy to think so here, with only the hills and skies to see and hear.”

“No, it would be the same,” I said.  “It is not because of that.”

“It is not because I am in your power?” she said.  She turned and faced me, her hands on my shoulders, looking me full in the eye.  The act a brave one.