“No,” he said, “I have not eaten anything. Get the horse brought round quickly, like a good fellow.”
He stood erect in the doorway until he heard the sound of hoofs. Then he went down the steps and mounted, turning his horse's head towards Wynberg. He galloped along the red road at the base of the hill, and only once he looked up, saying, “For the last time—the last.”
He reached the avenue at Mowbray and dismounted, throwing the bridle over his arm as he walked slowly between the rows of giant aloes. In another moment he came in sight of the Dutch cottage. He paused under one of the Australian oaks, and looked towards the house. “Oh, God, God, pity me!” he cried in agony so intense that it could not relieve itself by any movement or the least motion.
He threw the bridle over a low branch and walked up to the house. His step was heard. She stood before him in the hall—white and flushed in turn as he went towards her. He was not flushed; he was still deadly white. He had startled her, he knew, for the hand she gave him was trembling like a dove's bosom.
“Papa is gone part of the way back to Simon's Town with the commodore who was with us this morning,” she said. “But you will come in and wait, will you not?”
“I cannot,” he said. “I cannot trust myself to go in—even to look at you, Daireen.”
“Oh, God!” she said, “you are ill—your face—your voice——”
“I am not ill, Daireen. I have an hour of strength—such strength as is given to men when they look at Death in the face and are not moved at all. I kissed you last night——”
“And you will now,” she said, clasping his arm tenderly. “Dearest, do not speak so terribly—do not look so terrible—so like—ah, that night when you looked up to me from the water.”
“Daireen, why did I do that? Why did you pluck me from that death to give me this agony of life—to give yourself all the bitterness that can come to any soul? Daireen, I kissed you only once, and I can never kiss you again. I cannot be false to you any longer after having touched your pure spirit. I have been false to you—false, not by my will—but because to me God denied what He gave to others—others to whom His gift was an agony—that divine power to begin life anew. My past still clings to me, Daireen—it is not past—it is about and around me still—it is the gulf that separates us, Daireen.”