When she raised her eyes she saw that he had fallen back into his chair and was watching her intently with a puzzled and ardent look.

“You won’t keep me hanging on for an eternity,” he said, with the nervous contraction of his forehead she knew so well.  “If we must go to the scaffold, let’s go at once.”

“To the scaffold?” She smiled at him for the purpose of prolonging the thrill of the uncertainty.

“Oh, I hate marriage, you know,” he returned impatiently, “there’s not another woman on earth who could get me into it.”

She nodded.  “Well, that is to be hoped if not believed.”

He made an impulsive movement toward her.  “Believe it or not, so long as you marry me,” he exclaimed.

His flippancy grated upon her, and she turned from his words to the elusive earnestness which mocked at her from his face.  If she might only arrest and hold this earnestness, then surely she might reach the depths of his nature and be at peace.

“It never seemed possible to me that I should marry a man who has had another wife,” she said, with an emotion which was almost a regret for the old ideal of conduct from which she had slipped away.

“A wife!  Nonsense!” She saw the indignant flash of his eyes and the nervous quiver of the hand with which he pulled at his short moustache.  Though he did not touch her she felt instinctively that his personality had been put forth to overmaster her.  “She was nothing but a schoolboy’s folly, and I’ve forgotten that I ever knew her.  She’s safely married again now, so for heaven’s sake, don’t be foolish!”

“And how do you know that in ten years you will not have forgotten me?” she asked.

For a brief pause he did not reply; then he bent toward her and she hung for a rapturous instant upon the passionate denial in his face.  The look that she loved and dreaded was in his eyes, and she struggled blindly in her own helplessness before it.  He was so close to her that it seemed as if the breath were leaving her body in the intensity of the atmosphere she breathed.

“Forget you, my own sweetheart!” he exclaimed, and the trivial words were almost an offence against the emotional dignity of the moment.

She rose to her feet, stretching out her hand until she stood as if keeping him at a distance by the mere fragile tips of her fingers.

“If I love you, I shall love you very, very much,” she said.

With a laugh he bent his lips against her hand.  “You’ll never love me half so much as I love you, you bit of thistledown,” he answered.

“It will be either a great happiness or a greater misery,” she went on, hesitating, retreating, as she withdrew her hands and pressed them upon her bosom.

“There’s no misery any more—­it is the beginning of life,” he rejoined.

She laughed softly, a little tender, yielding laugh; then at the very instant when he would have caught her in his arms, she slipped quickly back until her desk came between them.