“Oh, if you want only my love,” she said at last with a gesture of despair, “I have lost all my pride.  I would like nothing better than to lie down and die in your arms.  I will promise to be faithful to you all my life; to go into a convent if you want it; to drown myself, or do any thing but lose your love.”

“It is not so very much I ask,” he urged.  “You fear hurting me by marrying me.  Do you ever reflect how much you will hurt me by refusing?  Do you know how solitary I am?  Not a human being counts for any thing in my life.  When I go to my rooms, I am terrified to think how lonely they will seem unless I can keep you in my mind.  You are the only woman I ever loved.  You are my companion, my ideal, my life.  We two souls have wandered about the universe from all eternity waiting to meet each other, and now after we have met and become one, you try to part us.”

As he went on with this appeal, he wrought himself into stronger and stronger expression of feeling, while Esther fell back in her chair and covered her face with her hands.

“If I am willing to risk every thing for you, why should you refuse to grant me so small a favor as I ask?  Look, Esther!  What more can I do?  Will you not make a little sacrifice of pride for me?  Will you ever find another man to love you as I do?”

“How merciless you are!” sobbed Esther.

“I ask only for time,” he hurried on.  “To part from you now, in this room, at this moment, forever, is awful!  You may go if you will, but I shall follow you.  I will never give you up.  You are mine—­mine—­mine!”

His passionate cry of love was more than flesh and blood could bear.  With an uncontrollable impulse of self-abandonment Esther held out her hand to him and he seized her in his arms, kissing her passionately again and again, till she tore herself away.

“There, go!” said she, breathlessly.  “Go!  You are killing me!”

Without waiting an answer, she turned and hurried away to her room, where, flinging herself down, she sobbed till her hysterical passion wore itself out.

Chapter IX

At her usual hour for taking Esther to drive, Mrs. Murray appeared at the house, where she found Catherine looking as little pleased as though she were ordered to return to her native prairie.

“We have sent him off,” said she, “and we are clean broke up.”

The tears were in her eyes as she thus announced the tragedy which had been acted only an hour or two before, but her coolness more than ever won Mrs. Murray’s heart.

“Tell me all that has happened,” said she.

“I’ve told you all I know,” replied Catherine.  “They had it out here for an hour or more, and then Esther ran up to her room.  I’ve been to the door half a dozen times, and could hear her crying and moaning inside.”

Mrs. Murray sat down with a rueful face and a weary sigh, but there was no sign of hesitation or doubt in her manner.  The time had come for her to take command, and she did it without fretfulness or unnecessary words.