"You don't understand, you don't know how--how wonderful you are. You
make me crazy. I love you, I want you as I've never wanted any woman
before--in a different way. I can't explain it. I've got so that I can't
live without you." He flung his arm toward the lights of the mills.
"That--that used to be everything to me, I lived for it. I don't say I've
been a saint--but I never really cared anything about any woman until I
knew you, until that day I went through the office and saw you what you
were. You don't understand, I tell you. I'm sorry for what I did to-day
because it offended you--but you drove me to it. Most of the time you
seem cold, you're like an iceberg, you make me think you hate me, and
then all of a sudden you'll be kind, as you were the other night, as you
seemed this afternoon--you make me think I've got a chance, and then,
when you came near me, when you touched my hand--why, I didn't know what
I was doing. I just had to have you. A man like me can't stand it."

"Then I'd better go away," she said. "I ought to have gone long ago."

"Why?" he cried. "Why? What's your reason? Why do you want to ruin my
life? You've--you've woven yourself into it--you're a part of it. I never
knew what it was to care for a woman before, I tell you. There's that
mill," he repeated, naively. "I've made it the best mill in the country,
I've got the biggest order that ever came to any mill--if you went away I
wouldn't care a continental about it. If you went away I wouldn't have
any ambition left. Because you're a part of it, don't you see? You--you
sort of stand for it now, in my mind. I'm not literary, I can't express
what I'd like to say, but sometimes I used to think of that mill as a
woman--and now you've come along--" Ditmar stopped, for lack of adequate
eloquence.

She smiled in the darkness at his boyish fervour,--one of the aspects of