"I am really here," he answered, "and it is really you! Nothing else seems to matter very much,—and yet, I would like to know why you alone, of all the world, should have discovered my hiding place."
She laughed, and seemed quite unconscious of the fact that he was still holding her hands. "I have been ill," she said. "I came down here to rest. Last night I heard in the village that you had arrived, that you were here alone. I knew then," she continued softly, "what had happened. I felt that I must come, if it was only for a few moments."
"It was very nice of you," he said.
Then they stood side by side in a silence charged with a sort of impotent passion. Why had she troubled to come, he wondered, now that the bubble of his wealth was burst,—she, who had held him to her cold-blooded compact, who had bound him to her by as sordid a bargain as ever the mind of woman could have conceived.
"I am glad to see you," he said, "and yet I don't know why. You did not hesitate to leave me without word of you, as soon as you saw the breakers ahead."
She drew a little away, looking at him as though she had only half understood. "When I lost the bond by which I held you," she said, "I could scarcely expect you to continue to pay. I have thought it all over since, until I think that I have drunk in all the shame which a woman could feel. It was a hateful, miserable thing, but then my life has been a hateful, miserable thing ever since I was a child, and I did long, yes, I did long," she added fervently, "for something a little different."
"You disappeared, then," he said slowly, "because you imagined, naturally enough, that so soon as you had lost your hold upon me, I should be only too glad to free myself from our engagement?"
"Of course," she answered, the color slowly staining her cheeks. "There was no doubt whatever about that. Only since then I have understood how great a mistake I made. If things had turned out differently," she continued, "I should never have dared to come to you, to tell you this and to ask for your forgiveness. But as it is," she added, "you cannot misunderstand me any longer, can you?"
"I suppose not," he admitted.
"I wanted to come and tell you that I was sorry," she continued softly, "and I wanted, too, to remind you that you are still young, and that the loss of a fortune is not the most terrible thing in the world. I heard yesterday that you were out upon Salthouse Neck, close to the quicksands. You know it is never safe there, with these winter tides. Life is not a thing to be trifled with. It may seem terrible to you just now to have lost your great fortune, to be once more a poor man. These things, after all, don't count for much against the gift of life. I know it sounds like humbug to hear me talk like this, but they were gossiping about you in the village. One man was saying that he shouldn't be at all surprised to hear that you had disappeared, and to find—to find—" she added, with a little shiver, "your body come up the creek with the next tide. You wouldn't do anything like that, would you?"