"And yourself? you will be careful of your health, will you not? And if I can ever serve you in any way, you will let me know?"
"It is not likely that you can; thank you."
There was a silence of some moments. Sarah stood playing with the tassel of her morning robe, pale and composed.
"Sarah!" Lewis took her hand. "We have both been hasty, both violent! Unfeeling as you think me, and as I may have seemed in this affair, believe me that it almost kills me to part from you so coldly. It is not like me to retract a determination, but if you will say now what you did last night—'Do not go!' I will stay, and be as good a husband to you as I can. Shall we not forgive, and try to forget?"
The demon of resentful pride was not so easily exorcised. At a breath of repentance—a suggestion of compromise, the fell legion rallied an impregnable phalanx. She was frozen, relentless; her eyes, black and haughty, met his with an answer her tongue could not have framed in words.
"I have nothing to say!"
"'Nothing!' The ocean must then separate us for years—it may be forever!"
"It was your choice. I will not reverse it."
"Not if you knew that if you let me go I would never return?"
"Not if I knew that you would never return!"