He took a step toward the door, laid his hand on the knob, and gazed down before him.

“Bertha,” began he, slowly, raising his head, “you have always disapproved of me, you have despised me in your heart, but you thought you would be doing a good work if you succeeded in making a man of me.”

“You use strong language,” answered she, hesitatingly; “but there is truth in what you say.”

Again there was a long pause, in which the ticking of the old parlor clock grew louder and louder.

“Then,” he broke out at last, “tell me before we part if I can do nothing to gain—­I will not say your love—­but only your regard?  What would you do if you were in my place?”

“My advice you will hardly heed, and I do not even know that it would be well if you did.  But if I were a man in your position, I should break with my whole past, start out into the world where nobody knew me, and where I should be dependent only upon my own strength, and there I would conquer a place for myself, if it were only for the satisfaction of knowing that I was really a man.  Here cushions are sewed under your arms, a hundred invisible threads bind you to a life of idleness and vanity, everybody is ready to carry you on his hands, the road is smoothed for you, every stone carefully moved out of your path, and you will probably go to your grave without having ever harbored one earnest thought, without having done one manly deed.”

Ralph stood transfixed, gazing at her with open mouth; he felt a kind of stupid fright, as if some one had suddenly seized him by the shoulders and shaken him violently.  He tried vainly to remove his eyes from Bertha.  She held him as by a powerful spell.  He saw that her face was lighted with an altogether new beauty; he noticed the deep glow upon her cheek, the brilliancy of her eye, the slight quiver of her lip.  But he saw all this as one sees things in a half-trance, without attempting to account for them; the door between his soul and his senses was closed.

“I know that I have been bold in speaking to you in this way,” she said at last, seating herself in a chair at the window.  “But it was yourself who asked me.  And I have felt all the time that I should have to tell you this before we parted.”

“And,” answered he, making a strong effort to appear calm, “if I follow your advice, will you allow me to see you once more before you go?”

“I shall remain here another week, and shall, during that time, always be ready to receive you.”

“Thank you.  Good-by.”

“Good-by.”