"What makes you believe I won't go?"
She clasped her hands and wrung them unconsciously.
"Val—"
"Or, if you go, you'll come back?"
"Don't you know that's what I must not do?"
"No," she said, in a muffled but resolute voice.
They sat silent, motionless, for some time. She turned at last with wide, shining eyes, putting her face close to his in the uncertain light, and saying, with a quick-drawn breath:
"Why, cousin Ethan!"
"What is it?"