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'Adelaide! I said I'd die for you! I'll live for you, live for your sake, far away from all these tongues, where none else but love and we can be; where all the livelong day I'll be beside you, teaching you to care for me, and speaking my love in words that every day you'll teach me to say more sweetly; gazing into your eyes and telling it you with mine, that as they look will ever learn a lesson of more love from you, their Queen. Dearest! sweetest! peerless love, let me live for you and die with you. Speak, dear Adelaide, speak and say you will, my Adelaide! my own!'

'I will!' She rose slowly, oh, so slowly, never putting aside the arms that held her, and looked steadily out of her broad-open eyes in his.

'I will leave all these tongues, these hateful looks and thoughts to go with you. I will-because I hate you, Philip Relf-coward, mean, unmanly, to come and take a woman in her friendlessness, alone; to tell her things untrue, and win her to you with a lie. I'll go for this, you coward, and my love shall curse you-blight you for this base unmanliness!'

She stood before him, flashing her eyes at him; queenly in her new-found woman's weapon that did not hesitate to sacrifice itself so that it crushed this man, once set apart from others as her treasure!

For a few moments he stood speechless at the strange, wild energy of her words; then he would have caught her to his heart, but she stepped back as he moved, and stopped him with her hand.

'Not now-not here-we have all life before us, and people live sometimes till they are eighty. There is time to spare.' She rang the words out in a mocking

chime that jarred painfully on his excited nerves.

'Yes, all our lives together. Why do you speak of it so strangely? surely it is what we have desired?'

'Yes, all; how strong-how noble a thing to boast of, you've conquered, when none but woman stood before you! Oh, noble, manly Philip Relf!'

He took no notice of her biting words.

'I knew that you loved me, Adelaide. Last night you were startled by the wildness of my words, because you thought them only words that men think women like, words with no other meaning than their own dull sound, the echoes of the twaddle, fashion labels "Love." My words were not like those, and they have gained you for me, dearest Adelaide.'

'What if I say I have no love for you?'

'I know you have, you said so but just now.'

'Philip, for once-for all-I tell you I have no love-no love for you. Look in my eyes, see how I look at you. I say I have no love for you.' In the remnant of her devotion, she was making one last effort to redeem him. 'No ?'

'No! again and for ever, no!' 'I don't believe your eyes!' 'Do you believe my words?' 'Not always. Women, pardon me, can look a lie as well as speak it

'Lie! I lie?'

'Not you alone; all women can, in love. I meant it generally.'

No answer. She had sunk again into the old position before the fire, leaning her head upon her open hands.

'Do you intend the words you said just now, or were they only meant to sting me?'

'I meant them fully. Will you still take me?'

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