“I should have to solve some other questions before I could answer that,” she said, trying to meet his eyes with the necessary steadiness.

“Couldn’t I help you?”

She shook her head.

“Then couldn’t you consider it first?”

“A woman generally does consider it first, but she speaks about it last.”

“But you could tell me the result of what you think, as far as you’ve drawn conclusions?”

“No; because whatever I should say you would find misleading.  If you’re in earnest about what you say to-night, it would be better for us both that you should give me time.”

“I’m willing to do that.  But you speak as if you had a doubt of me.”

“I’ve no doubt of you; I’ve only a doubt about myself.  The woman you’ve known for the last twelve months isn’t the woman other people have known in the years before that.  She isn’t the Diane Eveleth of Paris any more than she is the Diane de la Ferronaise of the hills of Connemara, or of the convent at Auteuil.  But I don’t know which is the real woman, or whether the one who now seems to me dead mightn’t rise again.”

“I shouldn’t be afraid of her.”

“But I should.  You say that because you didn’t know her; and I couldn’t let you marry me without telling you something of what she was.”

“Then tell me.”

“No, not now; not to-night.  Go on your long journey, and come back.  When it’s all over, I shall be sure—­sure, that is, of myself—­sure on the point about which I’m so much in doubt, as to whether or not the other woman could return.”

“I should be willing to run the risk,” he said, with a short laugh, “even if she did.”

“But I shouldn’t be willing to let you.  You forget she ruined one rich man; she might easily ruin another.”

“That would depend very much upon the man.”

“No man can cope with a woman such as I was only a few years ago.  You can put fetters on a criminal, and you can quell a beast to submission, but you can’t bind the subtle, mischievous woman-spirit, bent on doing harm.  It’s more ruthless than war; it’s more fatal than disease.  You, with your large, generous nature, are the very man for it to fasten on, and waste him, like a fever.”

She moved back from him, close to the bookshelves against the wall.  The eyes which Derek had always seen sad and lustreless glowed with a fire like the amber’s.

“You must understand that I couldn’t allow myself to do the same thing twice,” she hurried on, “and, if I married you, who knows but what I might?  I’m not a bad woman by nature, but I think I must need to be held in repression.  You’d be giving me again just those gifts of money, position, and power which made me dangerous.”

“Suppose you were to let me guard against that?” he said.

“You couldn’t.  It would be like fighting a poisonous vapor with the sword.  The woman’s spell, whether for good or ill, is more subtle and more potent than anything in the universe but the love of God.”