doubt. And the dream will come true."

"You have been in love?" she said, under the spell of his look and tone.

He nodded slowly. "I am," he replied, and he was under the spell of her
beauty.

"Is it--wonderful?"

"Like nothing else on earth. Everything else seems--poor and
cheap--beside it."

He drew a step nearer. "But you couldn't love--not yet," he said. "You
haven't had the experience. You will have to learn."

"You don't know me," she cried. "I have been teaching myself ever since
I was a little girl. I've thought of nothing else most of the time.
Oh--" she clasped her white hands against her small bosom--"if I ever
have the chance, how much I shall give!"

"I know it! I know it!" he replied. "You will make some man happier than
ever man was before." His infatuation did not blind him to the fact that
she cared nothing about him, looked on him in the most unpersonal way.
But that knowledge seemed only to inflame him the more, to lash him on
to the folly of an ill-timed declaration. "I have felt how much you will
give--how much you will love--I've felt it from the second time I saw
you--perhaps from the first. I've never seen any woman who interested me
as you do--who drew me as you do--against my ambition--against my will.
I--I----"