"When one thinks of being married," said Polly Kirkland gently, "it
isn't a question of the man you can live with, but the man you can't
live without. And I am sorry, but I've not found that man."

"I suppose," returned Ainsley gloomily, "that my not being able to live
without you doesn't affect the question in the least?"

"You HAVE lived without me," Miss Kirkland pointed out reproachfully,
"for thirty years."

"Lived!" almost shouted Ainsley. "Do you call THAT living? What was I
before I met you? I was an ignorant beast of the field. I knew as much
about living as one of the cows on my farm. I could sleep twelve hours
at a stretch, or, if I was in New York, I NEVER slept. I was a Day and
Night Bank of health and happiness, a great, big, useless puppy. And now
I can't sleep, can't eat, can't think--except of you. I dream about you
all night, think about you all day, go through the woods calling your
name, cutting your initials in tree trunks, doing all the fool things
a man does when he's in love, and I am the most miserable man in the
world--and the happiest!"

He finally succeeded in making Miss Kirkland so miserable also that she
decided to run away. Friends had planned to spend the early spring
on the Nile and were eager that she should accompany them. To her the
separation seemed to offer an excellent method of discovering whether or
not Ainsley was the man she could not "live without."

Ainsley saw in it only an act of torture, devised with devilish cruelty.