“You are sentencing me to death,” she said.
“Am I? Then Power dies, too,” he cried.
“No. That is not in the bond. You stipulate that I shall return to Marten as his wife, and that I am not to take my own life. But if my heart breaks, and I die, you will have glutted your bitter malice already, and Derry, too, must not provide you with a victim.”
“People don’t die of broken hearts.”
“Every woman who has loved will think differently. But you have some notion of what is meant by honor, I suppose? I demand your promise that if I accompany you now, and go back to Marten, and never attempt to meet Derry again—though that would be quite impossible, either for him or for me—you withdraw your threat, and leave him in peace during the remainder of your life.”
“I’m not here to receive terms, but to state them.”
“Then he and I will fall together beneath your bullets. Before you shoot him, you will have to shoot me.”
“Very well, then. I agree. I don’t want to kill my own daughter.”
“You have done that already. You have slain her soul, and her poor body is of slight importance. Ah, may Heaven forgive me if I am not choosing aright! Derry, my own dear love, you must never know that I am doing this for your sake, or it will not be the wretch whom once I called father who becomes judge and jury and executioner in my behalf!”
Willard, still turned toward the lake, heard her drop on her knees again beside the table. She wrote a few words, very few; for her dazed brain was incapable now of framing other than the simplest sentences. Then she sealed the envelop, and kissed it, and went out. Brushing the tears from her eyes, she gave one long look across the shimmering water, and saw a black dot which she knew was the canoe heading straight for the cabin.