"Elsie, promise me—" I began.
"Please don't, Jack, dear Jack, it is all right now. I have written him already. I wrote him I'd never see him again and never to write me."
"And if he does, will you tell me, turn his note over to me?"
She laughed. "Why, Jack, of course I will."
The setting sunlight streamed on her hair till it looked like banked western clouds. The very skies of Heaven were in her eyes, and her dignity and poise were like a queen's.
She took off the heart's-ease she had pinned on my coat.
"You don't need this now, my sweet prince."
"Don't, Elsie," I said; "my God, I can't explain, but, child—I need it now more than I ever did in my life."
For a moment she looked at me with pretended offended eyes.
"Ay, ay, I see; but you shall have me when you will, and you will need it, my bonny prince, until I am there," and she pinned it back between hot flushes and tears. "And you will see me soon, Jack, right here in our sweet trysting place?