“Nothing,” he cried, “so long as you will care for me.  I am not your judge.  I want you—­you, Emily, and your love.  To-night I care for nothing else.”

She laid her soft fingers upon his eager face, half caressingly, half in repulse.

“I never wished them harm,” she said.  “I was interested in their work, and to me they were merely units.  So they called me heartless.  I was only selfish.  I let them come to me because I like clever people about me, and society requires just such an antidote.  When they made love to me I sent them away or bade them remain as friends.  But that does not necessarily mean that I am without a heart.”

“I never want to think of them again,” he murmured.  “All that I want in this world is that you tell me that you care for me.”

She looked into his face, eager, passionate, almost beautiful in its intensity, and smiled.  Only the smile covered a sigh.

“If I tell you that, Douglas,” she said, “will it be kindness, I wonder?  I wonder!”

“Say it, and I will forget everything else in the world,” he begged.

“Then I think that I do—­care for you, Douglas, if—­”

He stopped her words—­she gave herself up for a moment to that long, passionate kiss.  Then she withdrew herself.  But for him the whole world was lit with happiness.  He had heard the words which more than anything else he desired to hear.  She could never take them back.  Her melancholy was a miasma.  He would laugh it away with her.

“Douglas,” she said, “it was because I fancied that you were beginning to care for me and because I knew that I cared for you that I went away—­not because I was afraid.”

He looked puzzled.  Then he spoke slowly.

“Emily, is it because I am poor and unknown?  I am no fit husband for you, I know.  Yet I love you, and, if you care, I will make you happy.”

“It is not that,” she answered.

He rose to his feet.  A darker shade was upon his face and his eyes were lit with fire.  A new look of resolution was in his face.  His lower jaws were knit together with a sullen strength.

“Emily,” he said, “there is nothing in this world which I will suffer to come between you and me.  I have been lonely all my days—­fatherless, motherless, friendless.  Now I have found you, and I know how bitterly I must have suffered.  If there are battles to fight I will fight them, if you would have me famous first, I will make myself famous, but no power in this world or any other shall take you away from me again.  Tell me what it is you fear.  Why do you hesitate?  I am a man, and your lover, and I can bear to hear anything.  But you belong to me.  Remember that.  I won’t part with you.  I won’t be denied . . . and I love you so much, Emily.”

She rose, too, and her arms went round his neck.  She drew his lips to hers and kissed him.

“There,” she murmured.  “You talk as I love to hear a man talk . . . and—­I too have been very lonely sometimes, Douglas.”