You've been strength and solace to him in this trouble.

Do you think if he loved you, Rotha--do you think, then, you could love him?
Wait," he added, as she raised her eyes, and with parted lips seemed prepared to speak.

"It is not for him I ask.

God knows it is as much for you as for him, and perhaps--perhaps, I say, most of all--for myself." With a frank voice and face, with luminous eyes in which there was neither fear nor shame, Rotha answered,-- "Yes, I could love him; I think I do so now." She spoke to Ralph as she might have spoken to a father whom she reverenced, and from whom no secret of her soul should be hid.

He heard her in silence.