"Whatever becomes of me, I never will live again with him."
"That is irrevocable?"
"Yes."
"I have kept my word--that you should have his message as straight as I could carry it."
"I believe you have. He certainly could not, whatever his intentions, have paid you a higher tribute than to entrust you with one for me."
"Then he does not and never can stand between you and me, Alice?"
"He never can."
The expression of his eyes would have frightened her at a moment less intense. Slightly paler than she had been a year earlier and showing in her manner rather than in her face only indefinable traces of the trouble she had been through, Alice brought each day to Kimberly an attraction that renewed itself unfailingly.
He looked now upon her eyes--he was always asking whether they were blue or gray--and upon her brown hair, as it framed her white forehead. He looked with tender fondness on the delicate cheeks that made not alone a setting for her frank eyes but for him added to the appeal of her lips. He sat down again, catching her hand to bring her close.
"Come," he urged, relaxing from his intensity, "sit down. By Heaven, I have suffered to-day! But who wouldn't suffer for you? Who but for the love of woman would bear the cares and burdens of this world?"