"I don't know anything about such feelings, and therefore cannot trifle
with them."

"What did your blushes mean this evening? You cannot deceive me; I have
seen the world and know it."

"I am not the world. I am only a school-girl, and if you had good sense
you would not talk so to me. You appear to think that I must feel and do
as you wish. What right have you to act so?"

"The truest and strongest right. You know well that I love you with my
whole soul. I have given you my heart--all there is of me. Have I not a
right to ask your love in return?"

Laura was conscious of a strange thrill as she heard these passionate
words, for they appeared to echo in a depth of her nature of which she
had not been conscious before.

The strong and undoubting assurance which possessed him carried for a
moment a strange mastery over her mind. As he so vehemently asserted the
only claim which a man can urge, her woman's soul trembled, and for a
moment she felt almost powerless to resist. His unreserved giving
appeared to require that he should receive also. She would have soon
realized, however, that Haldane's attitude was essentially that of an
Oriental lover, who, in his strongest attachments, is ever prone to
maintain the imperative mood, and to consult his own heart rather than
that of the woman he loves. While in Laura's nature there was unusual
gentleness and a tendency to respect and admire virile force, she was
too highly bred in our Western civilization not to resent as an insult