"Hermia!" He had caught her by the shoulders and held her gaze with his own.
"Let me go. It's true. And you ask me to marry you. Why should you marry me when you can win my lips without it?"
She laughed up at him, a hard little laugh, like a buffet in his face.
Still he held her—away from him.
"Your lips are mine," he said gently, "I could take them now—again and again. But I will not. See, I am all tenderness again. Your words cannot harm me—nor yourself. For love is greater than either of us. It is the secret you once asked of me, the secret of life. I've told it to you. I tell it to you now—when I let you go."
Her color came and went and her eyes drooped before him. He dropped his hands, turned his back and walked away.
"That is my reply," he said softly.
Could he have seen the glory that rode suddenly in her eyes as she looked at him, he would have read the heart of her. But that was not to be. Followed a silence. He would not trust himself again. The embers of their fire still smoked. With his foot he crushed them out.
"You will go, at once, to Paris," he said quietly, not looking at her.
She did not move, or reply, and only watched him as he made the preparations for departure. They went down the hill to the village in silence, Markham leading Clarissa at his side. At the gare a train was due in half an hour, and so they sat and waited, looking straight before them, no word passing, and when the train came he found a compartment and put her in it, with her bundle, then stood with head uncovered, until a stain of smoke above the trees was all that remained to him. Presently that, too, vanished, when soberly he took up his cudgel and went his way.