They would be
spared the quivering shame, the tingling regret, the struggle with
which she braced up her maiden modesty to that supreme effort. But
she would go through with it all the same. For eternal woman's
sake she had long contemplated that day; now it had come at last,
she would not weakly draw back from it.
Alan's eyes were all admiration. He stood near enough to her level
to understand her to the core. "Herminia," he cried, bending over
her, "you drive me to bay. You press me very hard. I feel myself
yielding. I am a man; and when you speak to me like that, I know
it. You enlist on your side all that is virile within me. Yet how
can I accept the terms you offer? For the very love I bear you,
how do you this injustice? If I loved you less, I might perhaps
say yes; because I love you so well, I feel compelled to say no to
you."
Herminia looked at him hard in return. Her cheeks were glowing now
with something like the shame of the woman who feels her love is
lightly rejected. "Is that final?" she asked, drawing herself up
as she sat, and facing him proudly.
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