"Yes, I've made up my mind," Herminia answered, with a faint tremor
in her maidenly voice, but with hardly a trace now of a traitorous
blush, where no blush was needed. "I've made up my mind, Alan; and
from all we had said and talked over together, I thought you at
least would sympathize in my resolve."

She spoke with a gentle tinge of regret, nay almost of disillusion.
The bare suggestion of that regret stung Alan to the quick. He
felt it was shame to him that he could not rise at once to the
height of her splendid self-renunciation. "You mistake me,
dearest," he answered, petting her hand in his own (and she allowed
him to pet it). "It wasn't for myself, or for the world I
hesitated. My thought was for you. You are very young yet. You
say you have counted the cost. I wonder if you have. I wonder if
you realize it."

"Only too well," Herminia replied, in a very earnest mood. "I have
wrought it all out in my mind beforehand,--covenanted with my soul
that for women's sake I would be a free woman. Alan, whoever would
be free must himself strike the blow. I know what you will say,--
what every man would say to the woman he loved under similar
circumstances,--'Why should YOU be the victim? Why should YOU be
the martyr? Bask in the sun yourself; leave this doom to some
other.' But, Alan, I can't. I feel _I_ must face it. Unless one
woman begins, there will be no beginning." She lifted his hand in
her own, and fondled it in her turn with caressing tenderness.
"Think how easy it would be for me, dear friend," she cried, with
a catch in her voice, "to do as other women do; to accept the
HONORABLE MARRIAGE you offer me, as other women would call it; to