man who needs you, and who will have you at all costs."

"At all costs?" she echoed, and her lip took on a curl. "And you call
this egotism by the name of love! No doubt you are right," she continued
with an irony that stung him, "for love it is - love of yourself."

"And is not all love of another founded upon the love of self?" he asked
her, startling her with a question that revealed to her clear-sighted
mind a truth undreamed of. "When some day - please Heaven - I come to
find favour in your eyes, and you come to love me, what will it mean
but that you have come to find me necessary to yourself and to your
happiness? Would you deny me now your love if you felt that you had
need of mine? I love you because I love myself, you say. I grant it
you. But you'll confess that if you do not love me yet, it is for the
same reason, and that when you do come to love me the reason will be
still the same."

"You are very sure that I shall come to love you, said she, shifting
woman-like the ground of argument now that she found insecure the place
on which at first she had taken her stand.

"Were I not, think you I should compel you to the church to-morrow?"

She trembled at his calm assurance. It was as if she almost feared
that what he said might come to pass.

"Since you bear such faith in your heart," said she, "were it not
nobler, more generous, that you should set yourself to win me first
and wed me afterwards?"