“I’m sorry, Ray,” she said finally.

“Sorry?”

“Sorry that I’m not the tender, trusting, maiden-creature who could fall trembling in your arms and love you forever, no matter what you did, and lie to you and for you the way good wives do.  But I’m not—­and, oh, I wish I were—­or else—­”

“Yes, Kate—­what?”

“Or else that you were the kind of a man I need, the mate I’m looking for!”

“But, Kate, I protest that I am.  I love you.  Isn’t that enough?  I’m not worthy of you, maybe.  Yet if trying to earn you by being loyal makes me worthy, then I am.  Don’t say no to me, Kate.  It will shatter me—­like an earthquake.  And I believe you’ll regret it, too.  We can make each other happy.  I feel it!  I’d stake my life on it.  Wait—­”

He arose and paced the floor back and forth.

“Do you remember the lines from Tennyson’s ‘Princess’ where the Prince pleads with Ida?  I thought I could repeat them, but I’m afraid I’ll mar them.  I don’t want to do that; they’re too applicable to my case.”

He knew where she kept her Tennyson, and he found the volume and the page, and when he had handed the book to her, he snatched his coat and hat.

“I’m coming for my answer a week from to-night,” he said.  “For God’s sake, girl, don’t make a mistake.  Life’s so short that it ought to be happy.  At best I’ll only be able to live with you a few decades, and I’d like it to be centuries.”

He had not meant to do it, she could see, but suddenly he came to her, and leaning above her burned his kisses upon her eyes.  Then he flung himself out of the room, and by the light of her guttering candles she read:—­

     “Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height. 
     What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang). 
     In height and cold, the splendor of the hills? 
     But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
     To glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine,
     To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
     And come, for Love is of the valley, come thou down
     And find him; by the happy threshold, he
     Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
     Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
     Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
     With Death and Morning on the Silver Horns,
     Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
     Nor find him dropped upon the firths of ice,
     That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
     To roll the torrent out of dusky doors;
     But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
     To find him in the valley; let the wild
     Lean-headed eagles yelp alone, and leave
     The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
     Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
     That like a broken purpose waste in air;
     So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
     Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth