"Sit down here by my side," I commanded her. "I must talk to you. I will—I will."
"Do not," she implored of me, seeing what was in my mind. "Ah, what shall I do! You are not fair!"
But I took her hands in mine. "I can endure it no longer," I said. "I will not endure it."
She looked at me with her eyes wide—looked me full in the face with such a gaze as I have never seen on any woman's face.
"I love you," I said to her. "I have never loved any one else. I can never love any one again but you." I say that I, John Cowles, had at that moment utterly forgotten all of life and all of the world except this, then and there. "I love you!" I said, over and over again to her.
She pushed away my arm. "They are all the same," she said, as though to herself.
"Yes, all the same," I said. "There is no man who would not love you, here or anywhere."
"To how many have you said that?" she asked me, frowning, as though absorbed, studious, intent on some problem.
"To some," I said to her, honestly. "But it was never thus."
She curled her lip, scorning the truth which she had asked now that she had it. "And if any other woman were here it would be the same. It is because I am here, because we are alone, because I am a woman—ah, that is neither wise nor brave nor good of you!"