"Kaituna, I love you! I love you. You must have seen it; you must know it. This is no time for timid protestations, for doubtful sighing. Give me your hands." He seized them in his strong grasp. "I am a man, and I must woo like a man. I love you! I love you! I wish you to be my wife. I am poor, but I am young, and with you beside me, I can do great things. Say that you will marry me."
"But my father!"
He sprang to his feet, still holding her hands, and drew her forcibly towards him.
"Your father may consent--he may refuse. I do not care for his consent or his refusal. Say you will be my wife, and no human being shall come between us. I have no money. I will gain a fortune for you. I have no home--I will make one for you. Youth, love, and God are on our side, and we are made the one for the other. You must not say no! You shall not say no. You are the woman needed to complete my life; and God has given you to me. Lay aside your coquetry, your hesitations, your fears. Speak boldly to me as I do to you. Let no false modesty--no false pride--no maidenly dread come between us. I love you, Kaituna. Will you be my wife?"
There was something in this akin to the fierce wooing of primeval man. All the artificial restraints of civilisation were laid aside. The doubts, the fears, the looks, the shrinkings, all these safeguards and shields of nervous natures had vanished before this whirlwind of passion, which bore down such feeble barriers set between man and woman. As his eyes ardent with love, passionate with longing, flashed into her own she felt her bosom thrill, her blood rush rapidly through her veins, and, with an inarticulate cry, wherein all the instincts she had inherited from her Maori ancestors broke forth, she flung herself on his heaving breast.
"Kaituna!"
"Yes! yes! take me I take me! I am yours, and yours only."
[CHAPTER XIII.]
EXIT MRS. BELSWIN.
She smiles she laughs! she talks of this and that--
To all appearances a very woman.
Ah! but that phrase bears deep interpretation--
"A very woman" is a treacherous thing;
Her smile's a lie--a lie to hide the truth,
For when the time is ripe for all her schemes
"A very woman" slips her smiling mask,
And lo! behold, a look which means, "You die."