"A light, please. You have no bed here, and none of the other rooms are fit for you to-night; so I have brought this. I had to leave him--there."
"Why should you trouble?" she asked drearily, with lack-lustre eyes on his burden of blankets and pillows. "I can so easily sit up; it must be near morning now."
He gave her a look so full of passionate adoration that her eyes fell before it.
"Do you think I am going to let you suffer one little bit--one atom of discomfort because of him? No, that shall not be; you shall never suffer."
"How can you help it?"
"How can you ask? We may have made a mistake, Maud; perhaps we hav'n't God knows. But if we have, why then--" He came over to where she was standing and took her hands in his. So they stood, those two alone, with nothing between them save a conscience which could be turned aside; every barrier raised by the world broken down by a strange fate, by a mere turn of the tide.
"Good-night, dear," he said, stooping to kiss her.
She made no reply, no protest; perhaps in her heart of hearts she knew that he said the truth. That if it was a mistake, why then--
The waves caught up that refrain also, as she lay with wide, sleepless eyes on the little camp-bed with which his care had provided her. "It is a mistake--you shall not suffer--it is a mistake--you shall not suffer."