Blake, I will go with you wherever you please, and I will be your wife, not counting cost,' I would put you back—gently, gently, my darling—with anguish at my heart, and I would refuse your proffered love, and I would bid you give yourself to the man whose wife you have promised to be, and who is worthy of you."
She said not a word, but he felt her frame shaking with a suppressed sob, as he held her two hands which he had taken in his.
He went on. "The feeling you have for me is only a sort of glamour, and will pass. I was wrong ever to tell you that you would not be happy leading the safe decorous existence which Frank Hallett offers you. You will be happy, you must be happy. You will have children round you on whom no baleful heritage will be entailed. You will forget me—I shall seem to you, looking back, only like a dream of the night—for I shall not trouble your life after you are married. I shall only wait for that, and then I shall go away."
"Where?" she murmured.
"God knows. Back to Ireland, I think. And thenWell, never mind. I have promised to tell you before you are married what my life has been and is. And now, my love, good-bye, and God bless you for your sweetness to me this night. I won't kiss you again. I am not worthy to kiss you. That was a wild impulse. Now, I cannot. I am not fit to touch you. And yet" He raised her hands one after the other to his lips.
Some one called "Elsie, Elsie, where are you?"
"Good-night," he said. "Good-bye. Before you are awake to-morrow morning I shall be gone. I too have business to see to."
They came out from the wattle grove. The party from the Humpey had left the log. Lady Waveryng and the Jem Halletts were already half way down the ridge, but Lady Waveryng's voice floated back during a momentary lull of the Blacks' shouts. She was saying with her English laugh—
