lie in Emily’s reluctance to hear him, but he dared not entertain the thought; it was his passionate instinct to plead it down.  Whatever it might be that she had in mind, she must first hear him.  As he spoke, he watched her features with the eagerness of desire, of fear; to do so was but to inflame his passion.  It was an extraordinary struggle between the force of violent appetite and the constraint of love in the higher sense.  How the former had been excited, it would be hard to explain.  Wilfrid Athel had submitted to the same influence.  Her beauty was of the kind which, leaving the ordinary man untouched, addressed itself with the strangest potency to an especially vehement nature here and there.  Her mind, uttering itself in the simplest phrases, laid a spell upon certain other minds set apart and chosen.  She could not speak but the soul of this rude mill-owner was exalted beyond his own intelligence.

Forced to wait the end of his speech, Emily stood with her head bowed in sadness.  Fear had passed; she recognised the heart-breaking sincerity of his words, and compassionated him.  When he became silent, she could not readily reply.  He was speaking again, below his breath.

’You are thinking?  I know how you can’t help regarding me.  Try only to feel for me.’

‘There is only one way in which I can answer you,’ she said; ’I owe it to you to hide nothing.  I feel deeply the sincerity of all you have said, and be sure, Mr. Dagworthy, that I will never think of you unjustly or unkindly.  But I can promise nothing more; I have already given my love.’

Her voice faltered before the last word, the word she would never lightly utter.  But it must be spoken now; no paraphrase would confirm her earnestness sufficiently.

Still keeping her eyes on the ground, she knew that he had started.

‘You have promised to marry some one?’ he asked, as if it were necessary to have the fact affirmed in the plainest words before he could accept it.

She hoped that silence might be her answer.

‘Have you?  Do you mean that?’

‘I have.’

She saw that he was turning away from her, and with an effort she looked at him.  She wished she had not; his anguish expressed itself like an evil passion; his teeth were set with a cruel savageness.  It was worse when he caught her look and tried to smile.

‘Then I suppose that’s—­that’s the end,’ he said, as if he would make an effort to joke upon it, though his voice all but failed in speaking the few words.

He walked a little apart, then approached her again.

‘You don’t say this just to put me off?’ he asked, with a roughness which was rather the effect of his attempt to keep down emotion than intentional.

‘I have told you the truth,’ Emily replied firmly.

‘Do other people know it?  Do the Cartwrights?’

‘You are the only one to whom I have spoken of it.’