Her eyes were misty with tears and her face quivered.
"Forget you! Forget you!" she cried, brokenly.
Raymond turned his face away.
"I know I shall always remember you!" he said in a low voice, as one making a sacred vow.
With a half-cry, half-sob she struggled to her feet. He had promised to spare her the pain of knowing that he knew her to be a mother, but even that paled beside the agony of feeling his presence within touch of her hands, and knowing that she must never clasp him to her heart.
"I must go—I must go away!" she panted feverishly. But before Raymond could rise, her weakened limbs had collapsed and she sank back into her chair.
"And I cannot!" she moaned, her hands pressed to her eyes.
"Please don't go!" he pleaded, laying his hand lightly on her arm. At the touch of his fingers she straightened up with a gasp.
"Before you go," she said, in a piteous half-whisper, "I should like to give you some little trifle as a keepsake, but I have absolutely nothing. But you can be sure that as long as I live—as long—as my heart beats and—my breath lasts—I will never forget you!"
An impulse that he could not resist moved Raymond to reach out and take her fingers in his.