"SHE HAS A SWEET, STRONG SOUL."
"There was never another man in my world but Max. There never could have been another. Some women are made that way. They can only give their best once."
"But—I would take—the second best. I would be thankful even for the crumbs from the rich man's table. Only let me have the right to take care of you, to give you——"
"To give me everything, and to receive nothing in return? No, Rupert, I could not let you do that, even if——"
"Even if?" he repeated after her, his eyes fastened hungrily on her face, his voice deep and appealing. "Can't you understand that I don't want to worry you for anything in return. I only want to be near you, to do all that man can do for you."
"And I am grateful, more grateful than I can ever express in words. Sometimes I am sorry you ever chanced to meet me, on that oasis in the desert. I think I have been a hindrance in your life, not the help I should like to have been. No—wait—don't contradict me for a minute," and Margaret held up her hand with a smile, as the man on the low chair beside her couch, bent forward in eager disclaimer. "Because of me, you have never married, when you ought to have had a wife, and a home, and children of your own."
"Do you think I could look at another woman, after I had once seen you?" he exclaimed vehemently, and she answered gently—
"Some day, I hope you will have a woman in your life, a woman who will bring you all the happiness you have missed, who——"
"I want no woman but you," he cried, a note of sullen passion in his voice. "Margaret—you say—he—was the only man in your world. Can't I make you understand that you are—what you have been ever since I first saw you—the only woman in mine?"
She put out her hand to him, the transparent hand, whose only ornament was its heavy wedding ring, and he stooped down and kissed it, with a curiously reverent gesture that made her eyes misty.