"Don't touch me, please. I do realise, perfectly, that we are not free to make any more dangerous experiments. But we are at least free to live and work independently of one another. Of course I know that you can compel me to remain with you,"—her colour deepened on the words.—"But I know also that you have too much chivalry, too much pride, to force yourself upon me against my wish."
"By God, yes!" he answered from between his teeth. "And . . . what is your wish, may I ask?"
For the first time she hesitated, and lowered her eyes.
"I believe our wishes are identical," she said.
"No need to trouble about mine. You can put them out of court altogether."
His tone spurred her to instant decision.
"My wish is to go back to Zermatt at once, by the funicular; and . . . that we should not see one another again. I will accept nothing from you. I can earn my own living, as I have done till now. Thank God, Michael is too blessedly Bohemian to make a fuss, or be horrified at things. He will simply be overjoyed to get me back."
She turned from him hastily; and he stood, like a man paralysed, watching her go. On the threshold of the bedroom door she looked back.
"Don't think of writing to me, or of trying to patch up a reconciliation between us," she said on a softened note. "Mended things are never reliable. I can neither forget nor forgive what you have said to me to-day, and when you have had time to think things over, you will probably feel thankful that I had the courage to leave you."
The soft closing of the door roused him, and he sprang forward with her name on his lips. Then Pride gripped him; Pride, and the habit of self-mastery hammered into him by his redoubtable uncle. The fact that our spirits thus live and work, deathlessly, in the lives and hearts of those with whom we have come into contact, is a form of immortality too seldom recognised by man.