’That if I go away from you now and finally, I go without a hope to support my life.  You are everything to me.  You are offended; you shrink from me.  It is what I expected.  Years ago, when I loved you without knowing what my love really meant, I flung away every chance in a moment of boyish madness.  When I should have consecrated every thought to the hope of winning you, I made myself contemptible in your eyes—­worse, I made you loathe me.  When it was too late I understood what I had done.  Then I loved you as a man loves the one woman whom he supremely reverences, as I love you, and, I believe, shall always love you.  I could not go without saying this to you.  I am happier in speaking the words than I ever remember to have been in my life before.’

Adela’s bosom heaved, but excess of joy seemed to give her power to deal lightly with the gift that was offered her.

‘Why did you not say this the last time?’ she asked.  One would have said, from her tone, that it was a question of the merest curiosity.  She did not realise the words that passed her lips.

’Because the distance between us seemed too great.  I began to speak of that money in the thought that it might lead me on.  It had the opposite effect.  You showed me how cold you could be.  It is natural enough.  Perhaps your sympathies are too entirely remote; and yet not long ago you talked with me as if your interests could be much the same as mine.  I can understand that you suppress that side of your nature.  You think me useless in the world.  And indeed my life has but one purpose, which is a vain one.  I can do nothing but feed my love for you.  You have convictions and purposes; you feel that they are opposed to mine.  All that is of the intellect; I only live in my passion.  We are different and apart.’

‘Why do you say that, as if you were glad of it?’

’Glad?  I speak the words that come to my tongue.  I say aloud to you what I have been repeating again and again to myself.  It is mere despair.’

She drew one step nearer to him.

’You disregard those differences which you say are only of the intellect, and still love me.  Can I not do the same?  There was a distance between us, and my ends were other than yours.  That is the past; the present is mine to make myself what you would have me.  I have no law but your desire—­so much I love you.’

How easily said after all!  And when he searched her face with eyes on fire with their joy, when he drew her to his heart in passionate triumph, the untruth of years fell from her like a veil, and she had achieved her womanhood.