There was a pause.

Wilding sighed heavily, and straightened himself from his bending posture.
"You should not have sought thus to compel me, she said presently.
"I own it," he answered a thought bitterly.

"I own it.

Yet what hope had I but in compulsion ?" She returned him no answer.

"You see," he said, with increasing bitterness, "you see, that had I not seized the chance that was mine to win you by compulsion I had not won you at all." "It might," said she, "have been better so for both of us." "Better for neither," he replied.