True to her word, at the appointed time she came knocking at his door. He was walking up and down—he had not ceased from this nervous pacing since she had left him and, at the first glance, she saw how taut every nerve was strung. She went to him directly, and taking his hand, pressed it to her heart. At her action, so full of gentleness and poignant feeling, he felt a longing to catch her up in his arms and surrender weakly each last shred of resentment.

“Inga—dear girl,” he said with difficulty, “you don’t know how you torture me and the worst is I can’t understand—no; I can’t understand at all!”

“Mr. Dan, why can’t it go on just as it has?” she said suddenly, lifting her pleading eyes to his.

“It can’t,” he said roughly. “You know that as well as I do. It’s gone too far. You’ve made yourself necessary to me. I must have you near me, by my side, every moment of the day. I don’t believe in myself; I believe in you, and that’s what I cling to. Good God, Inga, I don’t understand you! Do you think you have the right to do this now, and for what reason?” He stopped, looked at her, and said angrily: “You are not so idiotic to think I care what may have been your past. It isn’t any such thing as that, is it?”

She shook her head disdainfully.

“That has nothing to do with us,” she said coldly.

“Well, then what?” he said frantically. “At first, I thought you believed it was only out of gratitude.” He caught a look in her face and checked himself. “Inga, you do believe that. Good Heavens, don’t you know, don’t you understand how I have felt all these weeks, that if I have held myself in it was because I wouldn’t bind you, until—until I knew there was something to offer you in exchange—something more than a derelict, a derelict that was going under? But, child, don’t you know what I am, and don’t you know what you are—how I long for you and need you? Don’t you realize what you mean to me, to have you here close at my side, so young, so gentle, so strong! Haven’t you seen my eyes following you, craving your young loveliness? Haven’t you felt how my arms have longed to go out to you, to hold you to me? You mean everything to me—the end of a nightmare, the birth of a new day! And you could think that I’ve asked you to marry me out of gratitude! Inga, Inga; any man would be mad in love with you!”

He had ended turbulently, his hand on her shoulder. She looked at him long and penetratingly, as though plunging through the barriers that blocked the way to the truth that lay in his heart, the truth of the moment and the truth of to-morrow. This scrutiny lasted so long that he was on the point of breaking out again when she checked him with her hand.

“Yes; I believe that you love me,” she said gently, almost as though she were reassuring herself. She added with the same low, soothing melody in her voice that his ear had learned to crave, “And I, too—I love you.”

She pronounced this so solemnly that it sounded to him not like a surrender but as a farewell.

“And yet you won’t marry me,” he said, divining what lay behind.

“That is not necessary,” she said deliberately, “that is, marriage—your form of marriage.”

He turned like a flash and stood looking at her, his hands on his hips, open-mouthed.

“This is what I want you to understand,” she said quite naturally. “What you must understand. Will you hear me and try to see my point? I have sworn that I would never marry. I can’t—everything in me is against it. I can’t, I won’t acknowledge that any one or any system can force me to give myself to any man unless I love him, unless it is my wish to remain with him. How do I know whether you will always love me, always need me in your life? How do I know that I shall always want to be with you?”

“You!” he said, thunderstruck, for, at heart, like most artists, his nature was not a complex one and his religion was of the day and the moment. The idea that she could ever cease to love him struck him as more extraordinary than that he should ever change. “You can say that!”

“Yes; I can see that that might happen,” she said resolutely. “Even now, and I do care for you, Mr. Dan—believe me, I do love you,” she said, clasping her hands and half extending them toward him in a gesture of entreaty, “I only think of you; I only care what becomes of you, and I am so happy in that, and yet——”

“And yet,” he said sharply.

“And yet—now—even now,” she said, nodding to herself, as though the veil of the future had been lifted before her eyes, “I know that, if the time came when I couldn’t mean anything more, if I couldn’t follow you where you’d want to go——”

“But you are crazy!” he broke in roughly.

“No, no,” she said sympathetically; “I’m not so crazy—I am right! For, Mr. Dan, I’m not of your kind—I know it. If you were strong—if you were yourself, I would never have been in your life; don’t you see, don’t you understand? I won’t fasten myself to you! I won’t marry you!”

“That’s it, then,” he exclaimed; “now we have the real reason!”

“No, no,” she said hastily; “you mustn’t think that. That’s a reason, but not the real one. What I said to you is the truth. I can’t believe there is any higher right than my own to say when and how long I shall surrender my liberty——”

By this time, Dangerfield was in a towering rage. Despite her protestation, he was convinced that the real cause was one of pride.

“In other words, you prefer to be my mistress!” he cried with that intemperance which only comes when the longing for possession is so keen that love and hate tremble in the balance.

“No,” she said, with such dignity that he could not meet her glance; “I am willing to go to you, to live with you, to do everything I can to help you, so long as we are as we are to-day. That, to me, is marriage. To stay as your wife when nothing is left but ashes—no; that is too horrible. If I say this, it’s because I’ve thought about it and have the courage to believe it, because I want to keep my self-respect and my freedom.”

“Oh, your freedom!”

“Yes, my freedom, because like that I always will be free, to come, to go, to give, to think honestly,” she said gently. “Oh, I know you won’t understand. I know you’re thinking terrible thoughts about me. And yet—isn’t my way more honest than—than women who marry and divorce two and three times? Is that respectability to you?”

“What have you been reading?” he said curtly.

“It’s not what I’ve been reading; it’s what I’ve seen,” she said slowly. “It’s other women—it’s my mother’s life.” She covered her face suddenly, and her body shivered. “No, no; don’t ask me to give up my belief! Don’t ask me to be different than I am! I am wild and free as you say; please don’t change me.”

“I only understand one thing,” he said angrily, “and that is you don’t love me. If you did, it would not be a question of discussion.”

“No, no; you’re wrong, Mr. Dan.” She shook her head and held out her arms to him. “Mr. Dan, oh, why won’t you see?”

He turned from her, though in her eyes was a yearning toward him, and her outstretched arms and swaying body drew him to her. He went away and stood apart, his back turned, shaken by the longing which beat in his veins and yet resolved not to yield an inch. He did not believe in her proclaimed theories—they were only excuses. The real reason lay in her distrust of the future. But, this seemed to him so monstrous, at the very moment when he was only conscious of the utter obsession which she had awakened in him, that he raged at the unreasonableness of the barrier which had been thrown across the promise of the future. Her very resistance seemed disloyalty to him, as though another shared her with him and strove against him. All at once a thought awoke him violently. After all, had she ever mentioned the real, the true reason?

He wheeled and went back swiftly.

“Inga, is there any one else—is that it?” he blurted out.

The suddenness of the question staggered her. She drew back, but recovered herself almost immediately.

“I have told you my true reason,” she said, in a low voice.

“You have not answered. I have a right to know the truth. There is some one else,” he insisted.

“You see, this is just it,” she said solemnly, “you think you have the right to know everything about me. That’s what I don’t admit—any such right, either over what has passed or what is coming.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said nervously. “I don’t care what has been. Good Lord, I’m not asking more of you than I do of myself, but——”

“But you must know,” she said, looking at him with her sea-blue eyes, that in moments of tense emotion seemed to widen and darken.

“Yes; I must know,” he said, exasperated. “I must know something about you!”

“You mean everything—everything I have done,” she said, shaking her head, “every thought, all that surrounds me and makes me feel that something is hidden from the rest of the world. Oh, Mr. Dan, if I changed like that, if I were like every one else, you wouldn’t care for me—I know it, I know it! Mr. Dan, isn’t it enough what I’m willing to give you? Let me be as I am.”

He did by instinct, at last, the thing he should have done at first. He turned with a smothered exclamation and caught her in his arms, crying hotly:

“I don’t care for reasons and explanations—words, words! Whether it’s right or wrong, as you see it or as I see it, whether you want to or not, I love you, and you’re going to marry me!”

She closed her eyes; her body yielded in his arms and hung there inertly. Intoxicated, he believed, in this physical surrender, and with his lips close to her cheek, he poured out his heart to her, swayed by blinding tempestuous madness that found its answer in this unreason. Her eyes remained closed, her lips buried against his shoulder, where her head was pressed in a last instinctive defense. Suddenly she felt herself growing faint, threw back her head, avoided his lips, and flung herself loose, giddy and swaying, her hands to her temples, crying:

“No, no, Mr. Dan; don’t carry me away! It’s not fair!”

“What! You can be calm now?” he said, following her.

“I am not calm—I am not!” she cried. “Don’t you know that I love you? Oh, it isn’t fair to sweep me off my feet like this; it isn’t fair!”

A shiver went through her body; she covered her face with her hands and went to the window and threw it open. A long moment later he came to her side and laid his hand lightly on her arm.

“I’m sorry, I lost my head, Inga; I couldn’t help it.”

She turned, quite calm again, and looked at him with a smile.

“I’m glad you did,” she said frankly. “It’s something, something to remember—and it makes me believe.”

“I’m going to ask you once more,” he said solemnly.

The evening was about them, and they stood in the obscurity, their faces but faintly visible to each other, and when their hands touched, they trembled.

“I cannot,” she said, turning away. “Wait! You remember that night when we met the child leading the drunkard? You remember what I said—about memories? Well, that was my life; I was that child. My father was that and more—more than you can imagine, more than I can tell. And my mother lived with him, suffering every insult, every horror you can imagine. She lived with him, because she hadn’t the courage to break away—because they had brought her up to believe that when she married she belonged to her husband, body and soul. I saw what marriage was then, and I saw my sister, too, bound and sold to a man she couldn’t care for—a man who had a little money—a good bargain—and I know what marriage was, to her. She told me—when she hoped she was going to die. I hate marriage! I hate a thing that can enslave and degrade women as though they were brutes and convicts. Now, don’t you see what it means to me to remain a free human being, just as free in the giving as before?”

He was silent, seeking to evoke out of the past the figure of the child that her words had thrown before his imagination, amazed at this revelation of a thinking woman. She, too, was silent a moment. Then she turned.

“Give me your hand,” she said proudly. “Listen, Mr. Dan: If I take you and you take me—just you and I, the only ones who count—can anything be more reverent, more sacred than as we are now?”

Still he did not answer, though he raised his eyes and looked at her profoundly. There was no confusion in her eyes, no hesitancy in the softness of her voice as she continued.

“I will go with you, I will never fail you, I will be happy to give whatever you ask of me. I will do this as long as you love me and need me. Won’t this mean anything to you, Mr. Dan—won’t this satisfy you?”

He shook his head. His face in the dusk was stern and gray, for he realized at last the gravity of the obstacle that lay between them. The very gentleness in his voice showed her how resolute he, too, was in his conviction.

“You may think one way, Inga dear,” he said gently; “I think another. I couldn’t love you if I did you this wrong. I couldn’t, for wrong it would be to me. If I can’t have you as my wife, I won’t have you at all.” He waited a moment, and then added slowly as though weighing each word: “Now I’m not going to be a coward and threaten to go to the dogs to play on your sympathies. You have given me more than I had a right to take, and I’m going to try and hold what we’ve won together. Only—I’ve got to fight it out alone.”

“What do you mean?” she said, putting out her hand as though to ward off a blow.

For a moment, he lost control of himself—they were close together, and the dark had obliterated the room.

“I mean I can’t stand it! Flesh and blood can’t stand it!” he broke out. “Inga, I can’t have you near me—that I can’t do! It’s got to be one way or the other—all or nothing!”

“You mean I can’t—can’t come here any more?” she said, with a catch in her voice. “You mean I must go?”

“Yes; you must go,” he said, with a long breath. His hands flashed up and caught her shoulders and then fell limply again. He turned with an inarticulate cry and went hurriedly over to the switch and flung on the lights. At a gesture he gave of mute entreaty she went to the door, slowly and heavily, with dragging step. With her hand on the knob she turned.

“I can’t,” she said hopelessly. “There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t give you, Mr. Dan—except that. I can’t—it’s my belief; it’s—it’s me!”