“And you will let me think that I have a right to act as your protector?”
“My protector! I do know that I want such aid as that. During the days that we are here together you shall be my friend.”
“You shall not return alone. My journeys are nothing to me. Emily, I will return with you to England.”
Then she rose up from her seat and spoke to him.
“Not for the world,” she said. “Putting out of question the folly of your forgetting your own objects, do you think it possible that I should go with you, now that he is dead? To you I have spoken of him harshly; and now that it is my duty to mourn for him, could I do so heartily if you were with me? While he lived, it seemed to me that in those last days I had a right to speak my thoughts plainly. You and I were to part and meet no more, and I regarded us both as people apart, who for a while might drop the common usages of the world. It is so no longer. Instead of going with you farther, I must ask you to forget that we were ever together.”
“Emily, I shall never forget you.”
“Let your tongue forget me. I have given you no cause to speak good of me, and you will be too kind to speak evil.”
After that she explained to him all that the letter had contained. The arrangements for her journey had all been made; money also had been sent to her; and Mr. Gorloch in his will had provided for her, not liberally, seeing that he was rich, but still sufficiently.
And so they parted at Panama. She would not allow him even to cross the isthmus with her, but pressed his hand warmly as he left her at the station. “God bless you!” he said. “And may God bless you, my friend!” she answered.
Thus alone she took her departure for England, and he went on his way to California.