She provoked a renewed kissing of her hand; for magnammity in love is an overflowing danger; and when he said:  ’The burden you have to bear outweighs mine out of all comparison.  What is it to a man—­a public man or not!  The woman is always the victim.  That’s why I have held myself in so long:—­her strung frame softened.  She half yielded to the tug on her arm.

‘Is there no talking for us without foolishness?’ she murmured.  The foolishness had wafted her to sea, far from sight of land.  ’Now sit, and speak soberly.  Discuss the matter.—­Yes, my hand, but I must have my wits.  Leave me free to use them till we choose our path.  Let it be the brains between us, as far as it can.  You ask me to join my fate to yours.  It signifies a sharp battle for you, dear friend; perhaps the blighting of the most promising life in England.  One question is, can I countervail the burden I shall be, by such help to you as I can afford?  Burden, is no word—­I rake up a buried fever.  I have partially lived it down, and instantly I am covered with spots.  The old false charges and this plain offence make a monster of me.’

’And meanwhile you are at the disposal of the man who falsely charged you and armed the world against you,’ said Dacier.

‘I can fly.  The world is wide.’

’Time slips.  Your youth is wasted.  If you escape the man, he will have triumphed in keeping you from me.  And I thirst for you; I look to you for aid and counsel; I want my mate.  You have not to be told how you inspire me?  I am really less than half myself without you.  If I am to do anything in the world, it must be with your aid, you beside me.  Our hands are joined:  one leap!  Do you not see that after . . . well, it cannot be friendship.  It imposes rather more on me than I can bear.  You are not the woman to trifle; nor I; Tony, the man for it with a woman like you.  You are my spring of wisdom.  You interdict me altogether—­can you?—­or we unite our fates, like these hands now.  Try to get yours away!’

Her effort ended in a pressure.  Resistance, nay, to hesitate at the joining of her life with his after her submission to what was a scorching fire in memory, though it was less than an embrace, accused her of worse than foolishness.

‘Well, then,’ said she, ’wait three days.  Deliberate.  Oh! try to know yourself, for your clear reason to guide you.  Let us be something better than the crowd abusing us, not simple creatures of impulse—­as we choose to call the animal.  What if we had to confess that we took to our heels the moment the idea struck us!  Three days.  We may then pretend to a philosophical resolve.  Then come to me:  or write to me.’

‘How long is it since the old Rovio morning, Tony?’

‘An age.’

‘Date my deliberations from that day.’

The thought of hers having to be dated possibly from an earlier day, robbed her of her summit of feminine isolation, and she trembled, chilled and flushed; she lost all anchorage.