He knew it too. He knew it better than she did.
He got the will slowly out of his pocket and opened it. They looked together at her signature. Roger saw it through tears of rage, and crushed the paper together again into his pocket.
"Oh! Annette," he said, with a groan. "Why did you sign it?"
"I did it to please Dick," she said.
Across the water the church bell called to an early service. Roger looked once more at his little world, grown shadowy and indistinct in a veil of smoke. It seemed as if his happiness were fading and eddying away into thin air with the eddies of blue smoke.
"We must part," said Annette. "I am sure you see that."
The forget-me-not fell from her bosom, and she let it lie. He looked back at her. He had become very pale.
"I see one thing," he said fiercely, "and that is that I can't live without you, and what is more, I don't mean to. If you will marry me, I'll stand the racket about the scandal. Hulver is no good to me without you. My life is no good to me without you. If you won't marry me, I'll marry no one, so help me God. If you won't take me, I shall never have any happiness at all. So now you know!—with your talk of parting."
She did not answer. She stooped and picked up the forget-me-not again, and put it back in her bosom. Perhaps she thought that was an answer.
"Annette," he said slowly, "do you care for me enough to marry me and live here with me? You as my wife and Hulver as my home are the two things I want. But that is all very well for me. The scandal will fall worst on you. If I can stand it, can you?"