control.

"Ah no, I haven't forgotten," she said. "But I was a good deal younger
then. I didn't know much of life. I have changed--I have changed
enormously."

"You have changed--in that respect?" he asked her, and she heard in his
voice that note of stubbornness which she had heard on that night that
seemed so long ago--the night before her marriage.

She freed one hand from his hold and set it pleadingly against his
breast. "That is a difficult question to answer," she said. "But do you
think a slave would willingly go back into servitude when once he has
felt the joy of freedom?"

"Is that what marriage means to you?" he said.

She bent her head. "Yes."

But still he did not let her go. "Stella," he said, "I haven't changed
since that night."

She trembled again, but she spoke no word, nor did she raise her eyes.

He went on slowly, quietly, almost on a note of fatalism. "It is beyond
the bounds of possibility that I should change. I loved you then, I love
you now. I shall go on loving you as long as I live. I never thought it
possible that you could care for me--until you told me so. But I shall
not ask you to marry me so long as the thought of marriage means slavery
to you. All I ask is that you will not hold yourself back from loving