"Yes, if you care to claim me," she answers, gently.
"Rather your friendship than any other woman's love," says the rejected lover, loyally.
"You must not feel like that, it is so very hopeless," the girl answers. "I am going home soon. You may never see me again. I hope that you may love and marry some happier woman."
And when he has gone away and left her to the loneliness of her own thought, she sinks down in the long, sweet grass, weeping long and bitterly.
Until now she has never quite realized the truth of her widowhood. It comes to her with a great pang of agony that Vane Charteris has no longer any place among men.
His place in her poor life is vacant forever.
"And I loved him so dearly," she sighs, lifting her desolate, tear-wet eyes to the fair, blue heavens. "I loved him, and if he had lived he would have loved me. My patient love must have won him in the end."
And again her thoughts turn homeward as if drawn by some irresistible power.
"I will return to my native land," she resolves. "I will seek out Maud, if indeed she has escaped from the terrible web that encompassed her. I am so lonely and sad perhaps she will be kinder to me than of old."