"What is it, Luke?" she asked. "Why did you ring?"
"For your father, dear," he replied simply.
"Then you will do what I want you to?" she rejoined eagerly, "you will go away?"
He gave no immediate answer, for already the maid's footstep was heard along the passage. The next moment she was knocking at the door. Luke went up to it, gently forcing Louisa back into the shadow behind him.
"Mary," he said, with his hand on the latch of the door, holding it slightly ajar, "just ask Colonel Harris to come here, will you?"
"Yes, sir."
The girl was heard turning away, and walking back briskly along the passage. Then Luke faced Louisa once again.
He went up to her and without a word took her in his arms. It was a supreme farewell and she knew it. She felt it in the quiver of agony which went right through him as he pressed her so close—so close that her breath nearly left her body and her heart seemed to stand still. She felt it in the sweet, sad pain of the burning kisses with which he covered her face, her eyes, her hair, her mouth. It was the final passionate embrace, the irrevocable linking of soul and heart and mind, the parting of earthly bodies, the union of immortal souls. It was the end of all things earthly, the beginning of things eternal.
She understood and her resistance vanished. All that had been dark to her became suddenly transfigured and illumined. With the merging of earthly passion into that Love which is God's breath, she—the pure and selfless woman, God's most perfect work on earth—became as God, and knew what was good and what had been evil.
Neither of them spoke; the word "farewell" was not uttered between them. His final kiss was upon her eyes, and she closed them after that, the better to imprint on her memory the vision of his face lit up with the divine fire of an unconquerable passion.