‘It is better I should be at a distance from you,’ he said.  ’I want to know your mind, and not to be made insensate.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better still if you left me?’ Rhoda suggested, mistress of herself again.

‘If you really wish it.’  He remembered the circumstances and spoke submissively.  ’Yet the fog gives me such a good excuse for begging your indulgence.  The chances are I should only lose myself in an inferno.’

’Doesn’t it strike you that you take an advantage of me, as you did once before?  I make no pretence of equalling you in muscular strength, yet you try to hold me by force.’

He divined in her pleasure akin to his own, the delight of conflict.  Otherwise, she would never have spoken thus.

’Yes, it is true.  Love revives the barbarian; it wouldn’t mean much if it didn’t.  In this one respect I suppose no man, however civilized, would wish the woman he loves to be his equal.  Marriage by capture can’t quite be done away with.  You say you have not the least love for me; if you had, should I like you to confess it instantly?  A man must plead and woo; but there are different ways.  I can’t kneel before you and exclaim about my miserable unworthines—­ for I am not unworthy of you.  I shall never call you queen and goddes—­unless in delirium, and I think I should soon weary of the woman who put her head under my foot.  Just because I am stronger than you, and have stronger passions, I take that advantage—­try to overcome, as I may, the womanly resistance which is one of your charms.

’How useless, then, for us to talk.  If you are determined to remind me again and again that your strength puts me at your mercy—­’

’Oh, not that!  I will come no nearer to you.  Sit down, and tell me what I asked.’

Rhoda hesitated, but at length took the chair by which she was standing.

‘You are resolved never to marry?’

‘I never shall,’ Rhoda replied firmly.

‘But suppose marriage in no way interfered with your work?’

’It would interfere hopelessly with the best part of my life.  I thought you understood this.  What would become of the encouragement I am able to offer our girls?’

‘Encouragement to refuse marriage?’

’To scorn the old idea that a woman’s life is wasted if she does not marry.  My work is to help those women who, by sheer necessity, must live alone—­woman whom vulgar opinion ridicules.  How can I help them so effectually as by living among them, one of them, and showing that my life is anything but weariness and lamentation?  I am fitted for this.  It gives me a sense of power and usefulness which I enjoy.  Your cousin is doing the same work admirably.  If I deserted I should despise myself.’

’Magnificent!  If I could bear the thought of living without you, I should bid you persevere and be great.’

‘I need no such bidding to persevere.’

’And for that very reason, because you are capable of such things, I love you only the more.’