She held him off with her arm outstretched, dreading lest she should weaken and take her advantage of his remorse and so have to go through all this heart-rending renunciation again at some future time.
"You won't, Harry," she said, drying her eyes with her handkerchief. "I have thought it all out. My father asked me on his death-bed not to desert the Daventry estancia altogether. He loved it so himself that he did not wish to think that he would die and that no one of his own people would ever see it again and make sure that all was going well with it. And here's the opportunity. While you go down to the Antarctic I will go back to the Daventry estancia. I couldn't live here day after day with you away amidst the storms and the snow. There I shall be able to. I will have the estancia to look after. When will you go?"
"Not so very soon, Cynthia, after all," he said. "It will take me a year before the preparations are complete. Besides, there's the money to be raised."
Cynthia raised her shoulders in a gesture of reproach.
"Oh, Harry! There's no trouble about the money, of course."
Rames stared at her. "Cynthia," he cried. "You'll help?"
"More than help, Harry," she answered. "You see I let you go--yes. I even bid you go--yes. But I mean to have my share, my dear, in whatever you do. I mean that you shall carry something of me, something more than a telegram this time, to your farthest South."
Rames sat down in a chair by the side of the fire close to where she stood. He gazed into the flames in silence. With all gentleness and love she was heaping coals of fire upon his head. Every look, every word she spoke, confessed the deep pain which he was causing her. She was brave, but through the curtain of her bravery her fear and anguish shone. He spoke as a man will who is smitten by his conscience.
"I am very sorry, Cynthia. When I asked you to marry me I had no suspicion that any longing could get so strong a hold on me. I once told you carelessly that men were driven out upon these expeditions by the torment of their souls. I said that knowing it only by hearsay and by the plain proof of it which they show in what they have written. Now I know it--here," and he struck his breast above his heart. "Yes, I have got to go if I am ever to have peace. But I am sorry, Cynthia."
His voice trailed off into silence and Cynthia laid a hand upon his head and stroked his hair. "I know," she said, "I know."