“I'm a coward, I'm false to my own belief. It's love that makes me so. Oh, Heaven, I see so well what it would be! And it would be right, mind you. These laws of Society are nothing, absolutely nothing. But you are pleased, for reasons, to submit. You are deliberate, you are strong. It's the old thing over again. Hideous, vile, abominable servitude! But you are pleased to do it. You say it is Destiny, and you may be right. I tell you once more, I dare not say a word against it.”
“No, no,” she said hastily; “don't say anything to stop me. I must go on with it. I have promised. He knows I don't love him, and he doesn't care.”
Senhouse pricked up his head. “Does he love you, do you suppose? Do you believe it?”
She shrugged half-heartedly. “He says so. He seemed to when I told him that I was going away.
“When was that?” he asked her. She told him the whole story as the reader knows it. Senhouse heard her, his head between his hands.
At the end of it, he looked out over the valley.
“Would to God,” he said, “you and I had never met, Sanchia.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, why do you say that?”
He took her hands. “You know why.” There was no faltering in the look that passed between them now. They were face to face indeed. He got up, and stood apart from her. She waited miserably where she was.
“We may be friends now, I believe,” he said. “You'll let me write to you? You'll trust me?”