And he nodded, his heart numb, his will sick, thinking there must be some escape, and knowing there was nothing. For on the instant she said these words he heard the other words she had said the night he gave his qualified proposal of marriage. “You have no respect for me,” she had said then, and like a beggar to the beggar of his own pride, he knew that he could not refuse her. All the while he held Elena he felt cold as stone, but he knew that he would marry her, that he could not give her up for there was that law of life so cruel and so just which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same. If he did not marry her he could never forget that he had once made her happy and now she had nothing but her hospital bed.