CHAPTER XXVIII

The dinner is over--the first _tete-a-tete_ dinner that John and Peggy

have ever shared. To dine _tete-a-tete_ with her in her own still house,

amid her old and homely surroundings, with the summer evening tossing

them in its lavish perfumes through the wide-opened windows, would have

seemed to him, a month ago, the realisation of his fairest and most

hopeless dream. But in their translation into the bald language of

reality--the jejune prose of fact--our dreams have a way of losing their

finer essence. It has escaped, without our being able to tell whither or

by what channel. Over both a sort of wet blanket has fallen. Try as he

may, Talbot's temper cannot recover from the poignant disappointment of

his lost last evening; and try as she may--broken in, as she is, by a

lifetime's habit of self-sacrifice--Peggy cannot hinder the lump from

rising in her throat, and the tears from crowding into her eyes, at the

reflection that her own hand has cut off, and flung away, the blossoms

of these final crowning hours. How many things she had saved to say to

him on this last evening--things too tender for her shamefacedness to

utter, save under the justification of an imminent severance--things

that he would have liked to have heard all through these days, but that

she had laid up in the storehouse of her heart as too close and sacred

for aught but to sweeten their parting! How can she say them now across

a dinner-table, with Sarah coming out and in, Prue sending peevish

messages to her, a score of trivial interruptions forbidding any but

the most banal talk? It was only with her head on her love's breast, in

the dusk of the starshine, that she could ever have found courage to

utter them. When will they be uttered now? The present, the brave solid

present, is our own, to caress or misuse; but who dares say to the

future, that formless form wrapped in uncertain gray, 'Thou art mine'?

And now the dinner is over, and they have separated, with spurious

coldness. Peggy has vanished upstairs to her sister, and Talbot is left

to employ the hours of his last evening as he best may. It is true that

Margaret has eagerly begged him to take possession of house and garden,

and has held out tearful hopes of snatching here and there a moment from

Prue's sick exactions to give him. But his ireful restlessness will not

allow him to accept this concession. It would be worse to be within

apparent reach of her, yet just beyond her eye and touch, than to be

quite outside her domain. He tells her so, half harshly; and opening the

gate into the park, takes himself and his ill-temper to the oaks and the

deer for consolation.

At first he walks along over the dew-freshened sward, under the isolated

oak giants, or between the more gregarious beeches and limes of spinny

and copse, without seeing them. He has no eyes, save those angry inward

ones that are turned upon his own disappointment. His last evening!--his

last evening! If it had been any but the last! Henceforth, in

retrospect, this holiday of his will take all its colour from this

bitter last evening. It is the end that stamps anything as bad or good.

Oh, cruel Peggy! He has had so few really good hours in his life; and

now she has ruthlessly robbed him of his best. And for what?

With the answer which he is compelled to give himself to this question

comes his first dawn of consolation. Certainly to no personal

gratification has she sacrificed him. He can hardly, in his most

aggrieved moments, picture her as better amused than himself as she

stoops--with the tears called up by his ill-tempered words scarcely

dried upon her cheek--over her equally ill-tempered invalid, bathing her

forehead, holding her jealous hands.

Poor Peggy! He will go back at once, and beg her pardon. But no. The

consciousness of his being hanging wrathfully about will only further

complicate her difficulties. He will take a lesson out of her book, and

efface himself wholly for this one evening, even though it is the last.

The last in one sense, but in another----?

He has sat down on a felled trunk, stripped of its branches, but not yet

removed by the wood-cutter's cart. The hawthorn comes in _acre_ whiffs

to him. His heart, though he is alone for the whole evening--though he

will probably have to go back to his alehouse without one more glimpse

of her damask-textured face, gives a great bound. The last? For him and

her there will be no last evening until--for God, who has given him so

much, will surely give him, too, the supreme boon to die first--until,

bending over him as she now bends over Prue, her voice and her hands

smooth his passage to the easy grave.

The revulsion of feeling from his earlier ill-humour, produced by this

thought, brings the moisture to his eyes. What is this parting in

comparison with that six-months-ago one--when he had taken leave of her

with no rational hope of ever having his eyes enriched by her

again--when he had been afraid to trust his tongue to any speech, lest

it should drift into tendernesses he had believed for ever prohibited to

it? That parting in the walled garden! Why should not he go thither now,

so that, surrounded by the mute witnesses of his former despair, he may

the better gauge the extent of his new felicity? The idea, once

conceived, approves itself so instantly to his imagination that he

starts up; and, exchanging his former purposeless saunter for a quick

walk, sets off in the direction of the Manor gardens.

The evening is falling, in late May's best serenity, weighted with the

innocent sweetness of country odours. The deer--their mottled sides

growing indistinct--are browsing wakefully among the bracken. The

throstles have reached their song's last verse.

He has gained the pleasure-grounds, just as the vanguard of the stars

take possession of the emptied sky. He hastens along, almost as

hurriedly as if it were to a rendezvous with the real Peggy, instead of

with the six-months-old memory of her, that he were speeding; between

the burnished laurels; past the fresh-blown splendours of the great

rhododendron-beds, on fire with red, and pale with cream and blush and

lilac; narcissus and may taking his nostrils by storm as he brushes past

them to his goal, the still walled garden.

As he nears it, a misgiving seizes him that he may perhaps find himself

locked out--that he may perhaps have to content himself with the

mutilated satisfaction of peering in at it, between the wrought iron of

its gate; and it is with a trepidating hand that, standing at last

before it, he tries the handle with fingers not very confident of

success. But for the first time to-night Fate is kind to him. The gate

yields to his touch; and pushing it, he walks in. He has not been inside

the enclosure's quiet precincts since the night of that parting, whose

bitterness he has now come, in the wantonness of his new joy, purposely

to revive. He must indeed be happy that goes, of his own accord,

courting a dead misery. He draws a long luxurious breath, as he looks

round in search of the landmarks of that past woe. They are here, but

they wear a changed aspect. Through the wrought-iron railing, indeed,

the church tower and the yews, its brothers in age and gentle gravity,

still rise in the friendly dusk; but another race of flowers has sprung

in the place of those that witnessed his despair. The ghostly white

gladioli are gone, and the autumn-faced asters. The winter winds have

dispersed the down of the traveller's joy; and the penetrating breath of

the mignonette has long ago died off the air. But in their place another

nation has arisen; a better, he says to himself, as he stands with all

spring's scented hopefulness crowded about his feet.

He walks slowly along, seeking to recover the exact spot where that

parting had taken place; seeking to recover it by the aid of the small

landmarks that bear upon it. There had been a moon, a section of a moon,

to light it. There is none now.

He is glad. She has been the accomplice of half the world's crimes. He

wishes that the outward conditions should be as altogether changed as

the inward ones. He is glad that the trees, then wrapped in the heavy

uniformity of late summer, are now showing the juicy variety of their

early leafage. He is glad that the creepers are in bud, instead of in

lavish flower; glad of the fresher quality of the light air; glad of

anything that marks the fact that that bad old night has gone, and this

good young new one come. For so changed is his mood since the time that

he set off from the Red House gate, that his evening, though spent in

solitude, does seem eminently good to him, and his heart bounds with

almost as high an elation as if she were pacing beside him in the

starlight, with her head on his shoulder, as she will do in the future,

many hundred happy times.

He has paused in his walk. It was here that she stood--just here. He

knows the exact spot, by a comparison of the distance from the long bed

of violets, which, alone unchanged of all the flowers, still stretches

beneath the south wall, and mingles its odours with that of the new-come

flowers, as it had done with the departed ones. Just here! And he

himself had stood here. She had been facing the gate, and he with his

back to it. Thus, thus. The little crafty half-moon had shone into her

eyes, as she made him her last wistful speech:

'Since you are so determined to go downhill, I suppose that I dare not

say I hope our roads will ever cross again.'

Six months ago, only six months between the moment when he had in dumb

hopelessness acquiesced in the fact that their paths must for ever

diverge, and this in which they are, for all eternity, merged in one.

His eyes have dropped to the gravel, as if seeking the print of her dear

feet, that he may stoop and kiss it. His back is, as on that former

occasion that his imagination has so potently summoned from its grave,

turned towards the gate. He is alone. There are no witnesses to make him

ridiculous. Why may not he be as foolish as he pleases? He has actually

dropped on his knees, and is stooping his lips towards the pebbles,

which may or may not be the very ones her light step pressed half a year

ago, when the sound of the click of a latch behind him makes him raise

his head and spring to his feet. Who, at this late hour of the evening,

can be turning the handle of the gate? Who but one? She has forsaken

Prue for him after all. Love's instinct has told her the path he took;

and here, on the spot where he had for ever renounced her, she has come

to him under the stars. What welcome can he give her that will be

thankful and joyful enough for such an unlooked-for grace? He turns--his

whole face alight with ecstasy--towards her, but his feet do not move to

meet her.

By a refinement of love's cunning he will await her here; and, on the

very foot of ground that witnessed their separation, he will receive her

into his arms again. She has pushed the gate now, and, like himself, she

is within the enclosure; her white gown (he has often praised her in

white, and she must have put it on since he left her) flitting like a

snow-winged dove, along the dusky walk towards him.

'What an odd place you have chosen to say your prayers in!' cries a

high-pitched voice.

'BETTY!' For, by one of Fate's juggles, it is the old and not the new

love to whom his radiant greeting is addressed. It is the old and not

the new love whom, if his arms clasp any woman under the stars to-night,

they must enfold. They do not, indeed, show much readiness to do so.

They hang as if palsy-struck at his sides, while his voice repeats in a

horrified whisper that he would fain, if he could, make one of

incredulity, '_Betty!_'

'Do not trouble yourself to repeat it a third time,' says she, with a

flighty laugh that has yet no tinge of mirth in it. 'I do not need

convincing that _I_ am _I_, nor need you.'

'_You_ here?'

'I may return the compliment--_you_ here?'

He is staring at her with wide, shocked eyes that are also full of an

astonishment he is powerless to master. Is _this_ the Betty he had

parted from on that awful Christmas morning? _this_ the wretched woman,

clammy-handed, dishevelled, reckless of all save her own mastering

agony, who--her haggard mother-eyes unable to attain the boon of any

tears--had hoarsely forbidden him her presence for ever? Can this be

she--this hovering vision of lace and gauze--that has floated towards

him on the wings of the night, and now lifts to his, eyes that in this

light look as clear as Peggy's--cheeks whose carnations seem no less

lovely and real? Before his confused consciousness, the two visions--of

_that_ Betty and of _this_--inextricably entangled, and yet irrevocably

separated, pass and repass; and he continues standing, wordlessly,

stupidly staring, in a horror and a wonder that are beyond the weight of

his volition to conquer, at the woman before him.

After her last sentence she is wordless too, and also stands looking at

him, mute and full, as if she had forgotten his face, and were learning

it off by heart again, her factitious gaiety for the moment died down

and gone in the silent starlight. It is he who first speaks.

'You--you came here to see your children?'

'To see my children?' repeats she. 'Ha! ha! Yes, that was the reason I

gave at home; and a very pretty and laudable one too, was not it? To see

my children! But, as it happens, a woman has often more than one reason.

I had more than one.'

She has lapsed into her flippant gaiety again, and now pauses as if

expecting him to inquire into the nature of the other reason to which

she alludes; but if so, he does not gratify her. He is still fighting

with the horror of that double consciousness. Can this be the woman to

whom in that icy winter dawning his whole soul had gone out in such an

overpowering passion of pity? And if it be indeed she, has she clean

forgotten the sacred agony of their last farewell? Her laugh is still

dissonantly jarring on his stunned ear, when, finding it hopeless any

longer to wait for questioning on his part, she resumes:

'It is always well to kill two birds with one stone--is not it?' says

she, looking hardily into his eyes. 'Pardon the homeliness of the

expression! You know that reports reach even quiet places--Harborough,

for instance. Well, such a report--a _canard_ probably, but still there

was something oddly circumstantial about it--was spreading there

yesterday about a--person--I--used--to know--rather well--have some

interest in--in fact----'

She pauses again; her words have, for the last half of her speech, come

draggingly, with a little break between each, and not for one instant

does her eye release him. But again he makes no comment. Her breath is

coming perceptibly quicker when she next takes up her theme.

'You do not ask what the report was? No? I fear my little tale does not

interest you. It would perhaps be civiller on your part if you could

pretend that it did; perhaps you will think that it improves as it goes

on. Well, the subject of the report is a man; and the report itself--do

not you think that it was the simplest plan on my part to come and

verify it in person?--is that he is going to take to his bosom a--ha!

ha! I never can help laughing when I think of it--a--guess! No; you

would never guess--_a sack of pota_----'

'Do not call her names,' says Talbot, for the first time finding his

voice, and stretching out his hands, but now hanging so nervelessly at

his sides, in authoritative wrathful prohibition; 'do not dare to call

her names!'

'Then it _is_ true?'

Her laugh, little kin as it had ever had with real merriment, is

dead--strangled in her throbbing throat; and she puts up her hand as if

she were choking.

'Until you can speak of her with the respect that is her due, I will

answer no questions,' he replies sternly.

The next moment he sees her stagger in the starlight, and his heart

smites him for his cruelty. He makes a hasty movement towards her,

thinking that she is going to fall; but before he can reach her she has

steadied herself, and faces him, livid, it is true, under her paint, but

firm and collected beneath the stars. She has even recovered her laugh.

'Thank you,' she says, in a low but distinct voice, 'for the information

that you have incidentally given me, even though you refused to let me

have it direct. I have no further occasion to trouble you, and need only

offer you my congratulations and my hopes that you and your bride will

meet with some one to sweeten your married lives as you have sweetened

mine.'

So saying, she turns to leave him. If he were wise he would let her

go--would set no hindrance in her way; but which of us, in the crucial

moment of our lives, is wise? Before his reason can arrest him,

following only the impulse that forbids him to let the woman who for

five years had sat crowned and sceptred in his heart thus leave him, he

makes two hasty steps after her.

'Betty!'

At the sound of his voice, there comes a sort of wavering; but she does

not stop or turn her head.

'Betty!' he repeats, overtaking her, and preventing her egress by

setting his back against the wrought-iron gate; 'after all that has come

and gone, are we to part like this?'

'How else do you wish us to part?' she inquires in a steely voice of the

bitterest irony, while her eyes glitter, but not with tears; 'do you

expect me to dance at your wedding?'

'There is no reason why you should not,' he answers firmly, looking

steadily back at her. 'I have done you no wrong. Have you forgotten how,

and with what solemnity, you sent me away from you for ever?'

'So I did,' cries she, breaking into a hard laugh. 'Do not tell any of

my friends, or I should never hear the last of it. What an _acces_ of

superstition I had that cold morning! I will do myself the justice to

say, the first and last of its kind. I thought to save Franky by

renouncing you, was not that it? If I had known how little there was to

renounce, I might have spared myself the pains, might not I?--ha! ha!'

Again her merriment rings harshly on the soft air, and he can find no

word of rejoinder.

'How you must have been laughing in your sleeve!' pursues she, still

with that arid, withering mirth. 'Though the joke is against me, I

cannot help laughing at myself when I think of it.'

But at that he breaks in:

'I looked so like laughing in my sleeve, did not I?' he asks, panting,

and in a voice which emotion of the most painful quality he has ever

felt renders indistinct.

'No one would believe it,' she goes on, unheeding, apparently unaware of

his interruption, 'of a woman of my age, and who, as they say, has lived

every minute of her life--I _have_ done that, have not I? But it is

nevertheless Gospel truth that I was such a greenhorn as to be almost as

sorry for you as I was for myself. I suppose,' with a sort of break in

her dry voice, 'one gets into a stupid habit of thinking one's self

indispensable!'

She pauses, and making no further effort to depart, stands silent, with

set teeth and hands that unconsciously twist and tear the slight lace

pocket-handkerchief between her fingers.

What can he say to her? By what words--save words of entreaty to her to

put again the chain about his neck and the fetters upon his limbs--can

he appease or comfort her? And sooner than utter such words, he would

fall dead at her feet.

'Wretched superstition!' she says between her teeth, still rending the

morsel of lawn in her fingers; 'how could _I_, of all people, have been

such a fool as to be conquered by it? What did it matter to the Powers

above--what did they care whether I kept or threw away the one miserable

bit of consolation I had in my hideous life? The child would have got

well all the same, while I--I--but perhaps' (her tone changing to one of

alert suspicion), 'perhaps even then you had come to an understanding,

you and she. Perhaps even then you were hoodwinking me. I was so easy to

hoodwink--I, of all people, who had always thought myself so wide

awake--ha! ha!'

Again that dreadful laugh assails his ear, and makes him shiver as if it

were December's blasts that were biting, not May's breezes kissing his

cheek.

'I never hoodwinked you!' he answers, in an agitation hardly inferior to

her own; 'it was always plain-sailing between us. I went away because

you sent me.'

'And you took me at my word?' cries she wildly. 'Yes, I know that then,

at that moment, I meant you to take me at it; but I was out of my mind.

Hundreds of people less mad than I was then are in Bedlam. You might as

well have listened to the ravings of a lunatic as to mine that day;

and--you--took--me--at--my word!'

Her speech, which in its beginning was shrill and rapid, ends almost in

a whisper.

'I thought you meant it,' he says miserably; 'before God, I thought you

meant it!'

'The wish was father to the thought,' she says, again breaking into that

laugh which jars upon him far more than would any tears or revilings;

'you believed it because you wished it. I showed you a handsome way out

of your dilemma. I played into your hands. Without knowing it--oh, I

think that you will believe it was without knowing it--I played into

your hands. Without hurting my feelings--without quite giving the lie to

all your glib vows--without any disagreeable shuffling--you were free! I

set you free! _I!_ Oh, the humour of it! I wonder how you could have

kept any decent countenance that morning! and I--I--never saw it. Oh, I

must have been blinder than any mole or bat not to have seen it, but I

did not!'

She pauses, as if suffocated; but in a moment or two has recovered

breath and composure enough to resume:

'And I was _sorry_ for you. I do not know why I have a pleasure in

showing up my own folly to you; but, as you say, it has always been

plain-sailing between us, and one does not easily shake off an old

habit. Yes, _sorry_ for you! Not at first. At first I could think of

nothing but _him_; but he took a turn for the better very soon--God

bless him! As long as he was only getting well, it was enough for me to

think that I had him back--oh, quite enough!' some tears stealing, for

the first time, into her scorching eyes; 'but when he was on his legs

again, and everything going on as usual, then I began to see what I had

done.'

Her voice has sunk to a low, lagging key of utter dispiritedness.

'You never sent for me; you never wrote to me,' says Talbot hoarsely.

'Did you expect it?' she cries, a sudden eager light breaking all over

her face. 'Were you waiting for me to write? Did you watch the post for

a letter from me? Oh, if I had only known! Did you--did you?'

She has laid her hand convulsively on his coat-sleeve, and is looking

up, with all her miserable soul in her eyes, into his face. What can he

answer? He had watched the post indeed; but with how different a motive

from that with which her passionate hopes have credited him!

'No! I see that you did not,' she says, dropping her hand from his arm

with a gesture of disgust, as if she had touched a snake, a horrible

revulsion of feeling darkening all her features; 'or, if you did, it was

with dread that I should make some effort to get you back. At every post

that came in, without bringing you a specimen of my handwriting, you

drew a long breath, and said: "It is incredible! I could not have

believed it of her; but she has let me go, really!" Come, now,' with a

spurious air of gaiety, in ghastly contrast with her drawn features and

burning eyes, 'you were always such an advocate for truth; you used to

be so severe upon my little harmless falsehoods. Truth! truth! Let us

have the truth!'

'Have it, then!' he says desperately, stretching out his arms towards

her, as if transferring from his keeping to hers the weight of that

murderous confession. 'I _was_ glad!'

Again, as once before, she reels, as though it were some heavy physical

blow that he had struck her; and again his heart smites him.

'I--I--thought that we had both come to our right minds,' he says,

stammering, and seeking vainly for words that will soften the edge of

that bitter sword-thrust, and yet not incur the deeper cruelty of

bringing again that illusory radiance over her face; 'I--I--thought we

might begin our lives again--different, better! We had been most

unhappy!'

'_Unhappy!_' she repeats, in a voice that, if he did not with his own

eyes see the words issuing from her lips, he could never have believed

to be hers--'_unhappy!_ Are you telling me that you were unhappy all my

five years? Has she made you believe even this?' She stops, and fixes

her glittering look upon him with an expression so withering that he

involuntarily turns his away with a sensation as of one scorched. 'No!'

she continues, her voice rising, and growing in clearness as she goes

on; 'she may persuade _herself_ of that--what do I care what she

persuades _herself_ of?--but she will never really persuade you. No! no!

no!' a ring of triumph mixing with the exceeding bitterness of her

tones. 'There is one superiority that I shall always, to all eternity,

have over her; one that neither she nor you, do what you will, can ever

rob me of: I shall always--always have been _first_! There is nothing

you can give her that will not be second-hand!'

He has clenched his hands in his misery till the finger-nails bite the

palms. Is not this the very reflection that has been mingling its drop

of earth's gall with the honeyed sweetness of his heaven?

'Yes!' he says, panting; 'do I deny it? I can never give any one better

love than I gave you.'

'_Gave!_' she repeats, her voice dropping again to a husky whisper, and

casting her parched eyes up to heaven, as if calling on the stilly

constellations to be witness to her great woe--'_gave_! He himself said

_gave_! And I am alive after hearing it. Oh, poor I!'

Her voice shudders away in a sigh of intense self-pity; and she

hurriedly covers her face with her hands as if to shut out the view of

her own fate, as too hideous to be looked upon with sanity; while long,

dry sobs shake her from head to foot. The sight of her anguish is more

than Talbot can bear. Two steps bring him to her side; and before he can

realise what he is doing, he has taken her two hands and drawn them

forcibly away from her face.

'Betty!'

'Well!' she says dully, leaving them in his, as if it no longer mattered

where, or in whose keeping, they lay; 'what about Betty?'

'Betty!' convulsively pressing her small, burning fingers, 'you break my

heart!'

'I wish I could!' rejoins she fiercely. 'I wish to heavens I could! But

I must leave that to _her_. Tell me about her!' changing her tone to one

of factitious temperate interest. 'She is a good soul, I am told; _bonne

comme du pain_. There is nothing so pleasant as complete change, is

there? How does she show her goodness, by the bye? Does she say her

prayers every night, and make a flannel petticoat for the poor every

day, eh?'

He attempts no answer to her gibes; only, in his intense and mistakenly

shown compassion, he still holds her hands, and looks down, with a pity

beyond speech's plummet-line to sound, into the eyes whose beauty he has

long ceased to see, but whose agony has still power to stab him.

'I suppose,' she goes on, her mood changing--it is never the same for

two minutes together, and her mockery giving way to a tone of condensed

resentful wretchedness--'that if I loved you properly, as people love in

books, I should be glad to see you march off triumphantly, with drums

beating and colours flying, to be happy ever after; but I am not! I

tell you fairly I am not! If I had my will you should be as

miserable--no, _that_ you never could be; I would let you off with less

than that--as I am!'

He looks at her sadly.

'Even if I were so happy as you fear, a couple of hours ago, I think you

have cured me of it.'

'You used to be a kind-hearted man,' she says, scanning, as if in

dispassionate search, his sorrowful features; 'perhaps you are still, if

happiness has not hardened your heart. It does harden the heart

sometimes, they tell me; it is a long time since I have had a chance of

judging by experience. But, if you are, try not to let me hear much of

your happiness--try to keep it as quiet as you can.'

Her last words are almost inaudible through the excess of the emotion

that has dictated them.

'Perhaps you will have your wish,' he says gloomily, for the last

half-hour seems to have shaken all the fabric of his prospective

Elysium; 'perhaps there will not be much to hide.'

'That is a very civil suggestion on your part,' she answers, relapsing

into biting sarcasm; 'so likely, too. Go on. I am cheered already: find

out some more equally probable topics of consolation for me. Why do not

you remind me that I still have my husband--my husband whose society

_you_ have taught me so much to enjoy; my visiting-book; my--my----'

'You have your _boy_,' he interrupts sternly, goaded into anger out of

compassion by her tone.

Her hands drop from his, and a light shiver runs over her shuddering

body.

'_I--have--my--boy_,' she repeats slowly; 'so I have. God forgive me for

having even for one moment forgotten him! Yes, I have him--bless him!

but for how long? Even if he lives--oh, he _will_ live! God cannot take

_him_ too from me--I was a fool ever to fear it; but even if he lives

to grow up, he too will go from me. People will tell him things about

me; or if they do not tell him, he will pick up hints. I shall see it in

his eyes, and then he--too--will--go--from me!' breaking into a long

moaning sob. 'I suppose,' looking in utter revolt up to heaven, 'that

_They_ will be satisfied then. I shall have nothing--_nothing_--NOTHING

left!'

She has broken into a storm of frantic tears, that rain from her eyes

and career unheeded down her white gown. He can only look on miserably.

'But at least,' she says deliriously, every word marking a higher stage

in the rising sea of her frenzy, 'I shall always have been _first_!

Neither you nor she can take that from me. It may make you both mad to

think so, but you _cannot_. I shall always--always have been there

first. You may tell her so from me, if you like,' with one last burst of

dreadful laughter; 'it will be no breach of confidence, for I give you

leave.'

Then, in a moment, before he can divine her intention, or--even if he

had the heart to do so--arrest her, she has flung her arms convulsively

about his neck; and in a moment more she is gone, leaving him there

dazed and staggering in the starlight, with the agony of her good-bye

kiss on his lips, and his face wet with her scorching tears.