She smiled.
"If he did," she reminded him, "it would not make any difference."
"I will not admit that," he declared. "I want your love—I want your whole love. I want you to feel the same things that I feel, in the same way. You live in two places—in a real garden and a fairy garden, the fairy garden of my dreams. I want you to leave the real garden and let me try and teach you how beautiful the garden of fancies may become."
She sighed.
"Alas!" she said, "it is because I may not come and live always in that fairy garden that I am going to send you away."
"Don't!" he pleaded,—"not altogether, at any rate. Life is so short, so pitifully incomplete. We live through so many epochs and each epoch has its own personality. It was not I who married Ellen. It was Burton, the auctioneer's clerk. I cannot carry the burden of that fellow's asinine mistakes upon my shoulders forever."
"I am afraid," she murmured, "that however clever the Mr. Burton of to-day may be, he will never be able to rid himself altogether of his predecessor's burdens."
They were leaning over the gate, looking into the deserted hayfield. The quiet of evening had stolen down upon them. He drew a little nearer to her.
"Dear," he whispered, "there isn't really any Ellen, there isn't really any woman in the world of my thoughts, the world in which I live, save you."
She was almost in his arms. She did not resist but she looked a little pitifully into his face. "You will not—please!" she begged.