was John's real and ultimate motive, whatever other motive was virtually
put in its place. Mother and brother would agree on that point and he
thought of this agreement with a discontent that rapidly became anger.
Then he determined to marry Lucy, and so have a right to her company on
land or sea, at home or abroad.

For he argued only from his own passionate desire. Lucy had never said
she loved him, yet he felt sure she did so. He loved her the moment they
met, and he had no doubt Lucy had been affected in the same manner as
himself. He knew her for his own, lost out of his soul-life long ago and
suddenly found one afternoon as she stood with her father at the gate of
their little garden. She had roses in her hands, or rather they were
lying across her white arms, and her exquisite face rose above them,
thrilling his heart with a strange but powerful sense of a right in her
that was wholly satisfying and indisputable.

"I will suffer no one to part me from Lucy," he mused. "She is mine. She
belongs to me, and to no other man in this world. I will not leave her.
I might lose her; if I go away, she must go with me. She loves me! I
know it! I feel it! When she sat at my side as we were driving together
she _was me_. Her personality melted into mine, and Lucy Lugur and Harry
Hatton were one. If I felt this, Lucy felt it. I will tell her, and she
will believe me, for I am sure she shared that wonderful transfusion of
the 'thee into me' which is beyond all explanation, and never felt but
with the one soul that is our soul."

Thus as he walked down to the village he thrilled himself with the
pictures of his own imaginings; for a passionate bewildering love, that
had all the unbearable realism of a dream, held him in its unconquerable
grip. There may be men who can force themselves to be reasonable in such