"And that was how I made him do it." "Oh, Daren, I thank you, for mother's sake, for mine--I can't tell you how much." "Mel, please don't thank me," he answered.

"You understand, and that's enough.

Now say you'll marry me, Mel." Mel did not answer, but in the look of her eyes, dark, humid, with mysterious depths below the veil, Lane saw the truth; he felt it in the clasp of her hands, he divined it in all that so subtly emanated from the womanliness of her.

Mel had come to love him.
And all that he had endured seemed to rise and envelop heart and soul in a strange, cold stillness.
"Mel, will you marry me ?" he repeated, almost dully.
Slowly Mel withdrew her hands.

The query seemed to make her mistress of herself.
"No, Daren, I cannot," she replied, and turned away to look out of a window with unseeing eyes.