“I have no right to speak so harshly. The last words we shall ever say to each other must not be unkind. If I did not still love you it would be easier to speak smooth things.”
Her tears were falling.
“If you still love me,” she said brokenly, “it is your right to take me, whatever seems to hinder.” She held forth her hands, but without looking up. “Your voice is the highest leading that I know. Oh, are you not strong enough? Can you not bend me to your will?”
A sob stayed her, but there came another cry:
“If I were young!”
Kingcote quivered, then fell to his knees, holding the hands she had outstretched.
“Say good-bye to me in the kind voice I once knew!” He spoke in hoarse, choked accents. “Say it kindly, that it may be a sacred memory whilst I live, and a hope in death!”
She did utter the word, but in such a passion of weeping that it fell upon his ears like a moan. Then he kissed both her hands, and broke away....
“The tragedy,” Kingcote had once said, “is not where two who love each other die for the sake of their love; but where love itself dies, blown upon by the cold breath of the world, and those who loved live on with hearts made sepulchres.”...
Here is a letter which came to Kingcote from Mr. Vissian some six months later: