She asked, neither by word nor look, for any expression concerning the song; but as the last note died away seated herself beside him, chin in hand, looking far past him into the night.
At two of the next morning he awakened with a start. He was alone in his own rooms at Ravenel. Looking around in the half-light of the window, he put his head back on the pillow with the air of one awakened from a feverish
dream. But sleep had vanished for the night. Conscience was with him. The time had come for the reckoning; some settlement with himself was required.
Where was he going, and where was he taking Katrine Dulany? Marriage was out of the question. A person of his importance did not make a mesalliance. He owed a duty to all the Ravenels who had preceded him, to those who would follow. To marry suitably was the first duty in life; perhaps it was the only one which he acknowledged. Where was he going? He lay with open eyes, staring at the ceiling in the faint light of the coming dawn, with a sense of physical sickness at the thought of giving Katrine up, of letting her go out of his life forever. He had told her he cared more for her than he had ever thought it possible for him to care for any one. That was long since, back in the times before he had known the sweetness of her. Now, with all the heart he had to give, he had learned to love her, to long for her presence; she had touched a new chord in his nature, one which he had never known before her coming.
He would not give her up; he could not. Why should he? She would be happier with him, even though wrongfully his, than with a drunken
father in the forests of North Carolina. They would go to Paris together. It would be years before he would care to marry. But at the thought Katrine's eyes came back to him. Francis the King! It was so she spoke of him, and it was this complete trust that appealed to all the best within him, as a tenderness born of her sweetness, her complete loyalty, raised him beyond his own selfishness, and he resolved to save her, save her even from himself.
With this fixed thought he rose early and, breakfastless, went out into the dawn. He would go away and leave her. He would see her once more and tell her the truth about himself. He would make it clear to her, "damnably clear," he said to himself, with a set chin. She would be left with no illusions concerning him. It would help her to forget to know him as he really was. He felt it part of his expiation to tell her the truth.
As he rode up the pathway to the lodge he was white to the lips. His eyes were sunken. All the passion of which he was capable longed for this woman whom he was about to surrender, perhaps to some other. He winced at the thought of it.
She was sitting in the old arbor and turned
suddenly at the sound of his steps, an unopened book dropping from her hands at sight of him.