“You mean—?” the woman inquired, faintly.

“I mean this—­marry me here, to-morrow.”

“No, no!  Please—­” The Countess freed herself from Pierce’s embrace.

“Why not?  Are you afraid of me?” She shook her head silently.

“Then why not to-morrow instead of next month?  Are you afraid of yourself?”

“No, I’m afraid of-what I must tell you.”

Phillips’ eyes were dim with desire, he was ablaze with yearning; in a voice that shook he said:  “Don’t tell me anything.  I won’t hear it!” Then, after a brief struggle with himself, he continued, more evenly:  “That ought to prove to you that I’ve grown up.  I couldn’t have said it three months ago, but I’ve stepped out of—­ of the nursery into a world of big things and big people, and I want you.  I dare say you’ve lived—­a woman like you must have had many experiences, many obstacles to overcome; but—­I might not understand what they were even if you told me, for I’m pretty green.  Anyhow, I’m sure you’re good.  I wouldn’t believe you if you told me you weren’t.  It’s no credit to me that I haven’t confessions of my own to make, for I’m like other men and it merely so happens that I’ve had no chance to-soil myself.  The credit is due to circumstance.”

“Everything is due to circumstance,” the woman said.  “Our lives are haphazard affairs; we’re blown by chance—­”

“We’ll take a new start to-morrow and bury the past, whatever it is.”

“You make it absolutely necessary for me to speak,” the Countess told him.  Her tone again had a touch of weariness in it, but Pierce did not see this.  “I knew I’d have to, sooner or later, but it was nice to drift and to dream—­oh, it was pleasant—­so I bit down on my tongue and I listened to nothing but the song in my heart.”  She favored Pierce with that shadowy, luminous smile he had come to know.  “It was a clean, sweet song and it meant a great deal to me.”  When he undertook to caress her she drew away, then sat forward with her heels tucked close into the pine boughs, her chin upon her knees.  It was her favorite attitude of meditation; wrapped thus in the embrace of her own arms, she appeared to gain the strength and the determination necessary to go on.

“I’m not a weak woman,” she began, staring at the naked candle-flame which gave light to the tent.  “It wasn’t weakness that impelled me to marry a man I didn’t love; it was the determination to get ahead and the ambition to make something worth while out of myself—­a form of selfishness, perhaps, but I tell you all women are selfish.  Anyhow, he seemed to promise better things and to open a way whereby I could make something out of my life.  Instead of that he opened my eyes and showed me the world as it is, not as I had imagined it to be.  He was—­no good.  You may think I was unhappy over that, but I wasn’t.  Really, he didn’t mean much to me.  What did grieve me, though, was the death of my illusions.