crushing my brother--you--you expect me to let you crush ME too."

"But," he said eagerly, advancing toward her, "you are wronging me--
you are wronging yourself, cruelly."

"Stop," she said, stepping back, with her hands still locked behind
her. "Stay where you are. There! That's enough!" She drew
herself up and let her hands fall at her side. "Now, let us speak
of Jim," she said coldly.

Without seeming to hear her, he regarded her for the first time
with hopeless sadness.

"Why did you let my brother believe you were his rival with Cicely
Preston?" she asked impatiently.

"Because I could not undeceive him without telling him I hopelessly
loved his sister. You are proud, Miss Culpepper," he said, with
the first tinge of bitterness in his even voice. "Can you not
understand that others may be proud too?"

"No," she said bluntly; "it is not pride but weakness. You could
have told him what you knew to be true: that there could be nothing
in common between her folk and such savages as we; that there was a
gulf as wide as that Marsh and as black between our natures, our
training and theirs, and even if they came to us across it, now and
then, to suit their pleasure, light and easy as that tide--it was
still there to some day ground and swamp them! And if he doubted
it, you had only to tell him your own story. You had only to tell
him what you have just told me--that you yourself, an officer and a