“What you tell me, Euan, is pleasant to think on.  It reassures and comforts; nay, it is the sweetest thing you ever said to me—­ that you could find no happiness in my yielding unless I yield happily....  Why, Euan, that alone would win me—­ were it time.  It clears up much that I have never understood concerning you....  Men have not used me gently....  And then you came....  And I thought you must be like the others, being a man, except that you are the only one to whom I was at all inclined—­ perhaps because you were from the beginning gentler and more honest with me....  What a way to win a woman’s heart!  To seek her happiness first of all!...  Could you give me to another—­ if my happiness required it?”

“What else could I do, Lois?”

“Would you do that!” she demanded hotly.

“Have I any choice?”

“Not if your strange creed be sincere.  Is it sincere?”

“There is no other creed for those who really love.”

“You are wrong,” she said angrily, looking at me with tightened lips.

“How wrong?”

“Because—­ I would not give you to another woman, though you cried out for her till the heavens fell!”

I began to laugh, but her eyes still harboured lightning.

“You should not go to her, whether or not you loved her!” she repeated.  “I would not have it.  I would not endure it!”

“Yet—­ if I loved another——­”

“No!  That is treason!  Your happiness should be in me.  And if you wavered I would hold you prisoner against your treacherous and very self!”

“How could you hold me?”

“What?  Why—­ why—­ I——­” She sat biting her scarlet lips and thinking, with straight brows deeply knitted, her greyish-purple eyes fixed hard on me.  Then a slight colour stained her cheeks, and she looked elsewhere, murmuring:  “I do not know how I would hold you prisoner.  But I know I should do it, somehow.”

“I know it, too,” said I, looking at my ring she wore.

She blushed hotly:  “It is well that you do, Euan.  Death is the dire penalty if my prisoner escapes!” She hesitated, bit her lip, then added faintly:  “Death for me, I mean.”  After a moment she slowly lifted her eyes to mine, and so still and clear were they that it seemed my regard plunged to the very depths of her.

“You do love me then,” I said, taking her hand in mine.

Her face paled, and she caught her breath.

“Will you not wait—­ a little while—­ before you court me?” she faltered.  “Will you not wait because I ask it of you?”

“Yes, I will wait.”

“Nor speak of love—­ until——­”

“Nor speak of love until you bid me speak.”

“Nor—­ caress me—­ nor touch me—­ nor look in my eyes—­ this way——­ " Her hand had melted somehow closely into mine.  We both were trembling now; and she withdrew her hand and slowly pressed it close against her heart, gazing at me in a white and childish wonder, as though dumb and reproachful of some wound that I had dealt her.  And as I saw her there, so hurt and white and sweet, all quivering under the first swift consciousness of love, I trembled, too, with the fierce desire to take her in my arms and whisper what was raging in my heart of passionate assurance and devotion.