“Is that decision final?” asked Herbert as he picked up his hat. “Can no pleading, no proof of devotion change it?”
White to the very lips, Elsie answered: “It is final and absolute.”
“Then God pity us both!” cried Herbert as, with a face as white as Elsie’s own, he left the room.
Elsie threw herself on the floor and writhed in the agony of mental torture.
“Love him? Love him?” asked the tumultuous heart. Did she not rather idolize him. And now she had signed her own death-warrant. “God keep him wherever he went—how could she live without him?” A tempest of tears answered this question as she saw days stretch into months and months into years without one glimpse of the sunny blue eyes, one sound of the melodious voice, or touch of the kindly hands that had been so glad to anticipate any need or desire of hers. “How can I live, how can I live without him?” she sobbed aloud, writhing in absolute physical pain. “Oh, I shall die! I shall die! It will be too dreadful to live now!”
A second later a pair of strong arms gathered her within their embrace, and Herbert’s lips were raining kisses upon brow, cheek, and lips. “I knew it, Elsie,” he whispered. “I couldn’t give it up so easily. You do love me, I know you do. You dare not deny it.”
With sudden impetuosity a pair of lithe arms crept around his neck, and hiding her face in his bosom Elsie sobbed: “I don’t want to deny it now, for it has almost killed me. But truly I’ll never marry you.”
Herbert laughed. “Tell me the reason.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be right, and not even my love for you will make me do what is not fair and just.”
“That’s right, my little girl,” answered Herbert between kisses. “We’ll try to remove the wrong. Now that I know I’m held fast in the stronghold of your heart, I can conquer the world.”