She knew that he was asking her to consent to the sacrifice, and he knew that she was imploring him to spare her.

This was not what Madame Voss had meant by speaking softly.

Could she have been allowed to dilate upon her own convictions, or had she been able adequately to express her own ideas, she would have begged that there might be no sentiment, no romance, no kissing of hands, no looking into each other's faces,--no half-murmured tones of love.

Madame Voss believed strongly that the every-day work of the world was done better without any of these glancings and glimmerings of moonshine.

But then her husband was, by nature, of a fervid temperament, given to the influence of unexpressed poetic emotions;--and thus subject, in spite of the strength of his will, to much weakness of purpose.