“Esther, I meant it! you have fought your battle like a heroine.  If you will marry me, I will admire and love you more than ever a woman was loved since the world began.”

Esther looked at him with an expression that would have been a smile if it had not been infinitely dreary and absent; then she said, simply and finally: 

“But George, I don’t love you, I love him.”

THE END.