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298 me So you heard our farewells, Nell; were you sorry, or did you laugh?"

"It was nothing to laugh at," I say, seriously; "but I have always wanted to tell you. I felt such a sneak, but it was not my fault, and I thought I should vex you so by walking out in the middle. I wish I had never been there."

"Do you?" he says. Why?"

"Until then I had believed in love, and that it lasted. Now I know better; and that however hotly a man may worship a woman to-day, he forgets her to-morrow."

"Not if she is worthy," he says. Would you have him pour all his treasures into the sea? A man must be true to himself first, his love afterwards."

"And I cannot understand this distinction," I say, looking down at my flowers. "If I ever loved any one, and afterwards he proved unworthy, I should not let that turn me back. I should go on loving just the same."

"Because you have a sweet and unselfish nature, while I am selfish through and through," he says, slowly. "It is a cowardly thing, is it not, to be so careful to assure one's self against loss? But I have always felt that on the woman I married depended the making or marring of my life, and—still in my own interests of course—watched natures as narrowly and carefully as a man would look to the joints of his armour before going into a battle on the issue of which his life depended. Do you blame me that I will not sacrifice my life—I have only one, remember!—simply to gratify a woman's caprice? Can you show me a greater misery than to be bound to a person one can neither trust nor respect? With me worth ranks before beauty."

"I cannot argue," I say, slowly: "I can only feel; and it seems to me that lovers once, who love each other, should be lovers always; nothing but death ought to come between."