He too believed it to be their last meeting alone, and he raised her hand to his lips and held it there.
"I wish we could have stayed on and on in the Adirondacks," she said unsteadily. "Everything seemed to go well with us there."
"People in mid-ocean usually are happy and irresponsible. They would not be if it were anything but an intermediate state. But it is enough to know that on land our troubles are waiting for us."
She shivered and drew closer to him. The dangerous fire in her eyes faded.
"Mine are becoming very great," she said. "All I can do is to distract my mind, to fill up my time."
"And I can do nothing to help you! That is the tragedy of a love like ours: the more a man loves a woman he cannot marry the more he must make her suffer—either way; it is simply a choice of methods, and if he really loves her he chooses the least complicated."
"It is bad enough."
Her eyes filled for the first time in his presence since the morning of Harriet's death, but her mental temper was very different, and she looked at him steadily through her tears.
"I cannot help you," she said. "That is the hardest part. You are harassed in many ways, and you are dreading the bitterness of a greater defeat than today. I could be so much to you—so much. And I can be nothing. By that time you will have ceased to come here. I know that you mean not to come again after to-night, except when the house is full of company."
He began to answer, but stopped. She felt his heart against her arm, and his lips burnt her hand, his eyes her own.