"Can't you imagine one for yourself?" she asked.
He laughed scornfully.
"You don't understand," he said. "There is only one reason in the world that I would admit—I don't even know that I would accept that. The other things don't count. They don't exist."
She looked at him a little incredulously. She was still sitting, and he was standing now before her. Her fingers rested lightly upon the arms of her chair, she was leaning slightly forward as though watching for something in his face.
"Tell me that there is another man," he cried, "that you don't care for me, that you never could care for me, and I will go away and you shall never see my face again. But nothing short of that will drive me from you."
He spoke quickly, his tone was full of nervous passion. It never occurred to her to doubt him.
"You can be what else you like," he continued, "thief, adventuress—murderess! So long as there is no other man! Come to me and I will take you away from it all."
She laughed very softly, and his pulses thrilled at the sound, for there was no note of mockery there; it was the laugh of a woman who listens to hidden music.
"You are a bold lover," she murmured. "Have you been reading romances lately? Do you know that it is the twentieth century, and I have seen you three times? You don't know what you say. You can't mean it."
"By Heaven, I do!" he cried, and for one exquisite moment he held her in his arms. Then she freed herself with a sudden start. She had lost her composure. Her cheeks were flushed.