"Please respect it, then, if you think so," she said quietly. "You say that you care for me--no, I won't put it so--you do care for me. You love me, and I know you do. Let us be perfectly honest with each other. As long as you help me do right, it is not wrong to love me as you do, though I am another man's wife. But as soon as you stand between me and my husband, it is wrong--wicked! It is wicked, no matter what he may have been to me. That has nothing to do with it. It is coming between man and wife--"
"Oh--really--that is going too far!" Wimpole raised his head a little higher, and seemed to breathe the night air angrily through his nostrils.
"No," answered Helen, persistently, for she was arguing against her heart, if not against her head, "it is not going at all too far. Such things should be taken for granted, or at least they should be left to the man and wife in question to decide. No one has any right to interfere, and no one shall. If I can forgive, you can have nothing to resent; for the mere fact of your liking me very much does not give you any sort of right to direct my life, does it? I am glad that you are so fond of me, for I trust you and respect you in every way, and even now I know that you are interfering only because you care for me. But you have not the right to interfere, not the slightest, and although you may be able to, yet if I beg you not to, it will not be honourable of you to come between us."
Colonel Wimpole moved a little impatiently.
"I will take my honour into my own hands," he said.
"But not mine," answered Helen.
They looked at each other in the gloom, as they leaned upon the railing.
"Yours shall be quite safe," said the colonel slowly. "But if you will drop that letter into the river, you will make things easier in every way."
"I should write it over again. Besides, I have telegraphed to him already."
"What? Cabled?"