"Rivers, we have very little time to spare."
His closed right hand rested on his knee, and Eglah laid hers upon it.
"Since I was a little girl you have been my faithful, sympathizing, patient friend, and now I can not bear that you should leave me without uttering one kind word of forgiveness for the great wrong I realize at last that I have done you."
"Eglah, for God's sake don't open that door, which shuts out—what I can not discuss again with you, because I must not wound you."
She noticed the suppressed pant in his voice, and as he did not respond to the touch of her hand, her slender fingers crept between and twined around his.
"Mr. Herriott, when you come home——"
"I shall try not to come home."
"If I promise you shall never see me there, perhaps that assurance may tempt you back. You are casting me out of your life, and I have no right to complain, but I wish to say that I hope you will have no fear for the name you gave irrevocably into my keeping."
"You bear my name, my father's name, but I am very sure your little white hands will hold it clean, pure, and sacred. Should you invoke legal aid to free you from merely nominal matrimonial bonds, I prefer you should then resume your father's name. If you choose to make no change, and I do not return, the name will die with you, and I believe you will guard it as you would the Grail."
Unconsciously his hand tightened on hers, until the edge of the ring cut into her finger.