floral oil painting

always restrained, and always checked- forced to keep the fire of my
nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never
utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital-
this would be unendurable.
'St. John!' I exclaimed, when I had got so far in my meditation.
'Well?' he answered icily.
'I repeat I freely consent to go with you as your
fellow-missionary, but not as your wife; I cannot marry you and become
part of you.'
'A part of me you must become,' he answered steadily: 'otherwise
the whole bargain is void. How can I, a man not yet thirty, take out
with me to India a girl of nineteen, unless she be married to me?
How can we be for ever together- sometimes in solitudes, sometimes
amidst savage tribes- and unwed?'
'Very well,' I said shortly; 'under the circumstances, quite as
well as if I were either your real sister, or a man and a clergyman
like yourself.'
'It is known that you are not my sister; I cannot introduce you