Arthur lost the last remnant of his self-consciousness.  He saw he was about to lose, if indeed he had not already lost, that which had come to mean life to him—­the happiness from this woman’s beauty, the strength from her character, the sympathy from her mind and heart.  It was in terror that he asked:  “Why, Madelene?  What is it?  What have I done?” And in dread he studied her firm, regular profile, a graceful strength that was Greek, and so wonderfully completed by her hair, blue black and thick and wavy about the temple and ear and the nape of the neck.

The girl did not answer immediately; he thought she was refusing to hear, yet he could find no words with which to try to stem the current of those ominous thoughts.  At last she said:  “You talk about the position you have ‘come down from’ and the position you are going back to—­and that you are grateful to your father for having brought you down where you were humble enough to find me.”

“Madelene!”

“Wait!” she commanded.  “You wish to know what is the matter with me.  Let me tell you.  We didn’t receive you here because you are a cooper or because you had been rich.  I never thought about your position or your prospects.  A woman—­at least a woman like me—­doesn’t love a man for his position, doesn’t love him for his prospects.  I’ve been taking you at just what you were—­or seemed to be.  And you—­you haven’t come, asking me to marry you.  You treat me like one of those silly women in what they call ‘society’ here in Saint X. You ask me to wait until you can support me fashionably—­I who am not fashionable—­and who will always support myself.  What you talked isn’t what I call love, Arthur.  I don’t want to hear any more about it—­or, we might not be able to be even friends.”

She paused; but Arthur could not reply.  To deny was impossible, and he had no wish to attempt to make excuses.  She had shown him to himself, and he could only echo her just scorn.

“As for waiting,” she went on, “I am sure, from what you say, that if you ever got back in the lofty place of a parasite living idly and foolishly on what you abstracted from the labor of others, you’d forget me—­just as your rich friends have forgotten you.”  She laughed bitterly.  “O Arthur, Arthur, what a fraud you are!  Here, I’ve been admiring your fine talk about your being a laborer, about what you’d do if you ever got the power.  And it was all simply envy and jealousy and trying to make yourself believe you weren’t so low down in the social scale as you thought you were.  You’re too fine a gentleman for Madelene Schulze, Arthur.  Wait till you get back your lost paradise; then take a wife who gives her heart only where her vanity permits.  You don’t want me, and I—­don’t want you!”

Her voice broke there.  With a cry that might have been her name or just an inarticulate call from his heart to hers, he caught her in his arms, and she was sobbing against his shoulder.  “You can’t mean it, Madelene,” he murmured, holding her tight and kissing her cheek, her hair, her ear.  “You don’t mean it.”