“Lois!  Is it not in you to love me as a woman loves a man?”

“I told you that when the time arrived I would doubtless be what you wish me to be——­”

“You can love me, then?”

“How do I know?  You perplex and vex me.  Who else would I love but you?  Who else is there in the world—­ except my mother?”

There was a silence; then I said: 

“Has this passionate quest of her so wholly absorbed and controlled you that all else counts as nothing?”

“Yes, yes!  You know it.  You knew it at Otsego!  Nothing else matters.  I will not permit anything else to matter!  And, lest you deem me cold, thankless, inhuman, ask of yourself, Euan, why such a lonely girl as I should close her eyes and stop her ears and lock her heart and—­ and turn her face away when the man—­ to whom she owes all—­ to whom she is—­ utterly devoted—­ urges her toward emotions—­ toward matters strange to her—­ and too profound as yet.  So I ask you, for a time, to let what sleeps within us both lie sleeping, undisturbed.  There is a love more natural, more imperious, more passionate still; and—­ it has led me here!  And I will not confuse it with any other sentiment; nor share it with any man—­ not even with you—­ dear as you have become to me—­ lonely as I am, —­ no, not even with you will I share it!  For I have vowed that I shall never slake my thirst with love save first in her dear embrace....  After these wistful, stark, and barren years—­ loveless, weary, naked, and unkind——­” Suddenly she covered her face with her hands, bowing her head to her knees.

“Yet you bid me hope, Lois?” I asked under my breath.

She nodded.

“You make me happy beyond words,” I whispered.

She looked up from her hands: 

“Is that all you required to make you happy?”

“Can I ask more?”

“I—­ I thought men were more ruthless—­ more imperious and hotly impatient with the mistress of their hearts—­ if truly I am mistress of yours, as you tell me.”

“I am impatient only for your happiness; ruthless only to secure it.”

“For my happiness?  Not for your own?”

“How can that come to me save when yours comes to you?”

“Oh!...  I did not understand.  I had not thought it mattered very greatly to men, so that they found their happiness—­ so that they found contentment in their sweethearts’ yielding....  Then my surrender would mean nothing to you unless I yielded happily?”

“Nothing.  Good God!  In what school have you learned of love!”

She nodded thoughtfully, looking me in the eyes.