"Oh, no; not that. Only--"

"Only what? Surely you are not one of the men who grudge women the
chance to prove what is in them--who would treat us like china dolls and
circumscribe us by conventions? I know you are not, because I have heard
you inveigh against that very sort of narrow mindedness. Only what?"

"I can't make up my mind to it. And I suppose the reason is that it
means so much to me--that you mean so much to me. What is the use of my
dodging the truth, Selma--seeking to conceal it because such a short
time has elapsed since you ceased to be a wife? Forgive me if I hurt
you, if it seem indelicate to speak of love at the very moment when you
are happy in your liberty. I can't help it; it's my nature to speak
openly. And there's no bar now. The fact that you are free makes clear
to me what I have not dared to countenance before, that you are the one
woman in the world for me--the woman I have dreamed of--and longed to
meet--the woman whose influence has blessed me already, and without whom
I shall lack the greatest happiness which life can give. Selma, I love
you--I adore you."

Selma listened with greedy ears, which she could scarcely believe. It
seemed to her that she was in dream-land, so unexpected, yet entrancing,
was his avowal. She had been vaguely aware that he admired her more than
he had allowed himself to disclose, and conscious, too, that his
presence was agreeable to her; but in an instant now she recognized that
this was love--the love she had sought, the love she had yearned to
inspire and to feel. Compared with it, Babcock's clumsy ecstasy and her
own sufferance of it had been a sham and a delusion. Of so much she was
conscious in a twinkling, and yet what she deemed proper self-respect