"When I marry her," he added, after a moment, "I shall take her far away, Lina. I think it best—as you said—to put the whole width of the world between you and me forever."
She bowed speechlessly. The blue-gray-eyes—black now with a yearning love and fathomless despair—looked into hers gloomily a moment, then the carriage-door clanged heavily between them, the carriage-wheels echoed "low on the sand and loud on the stone."
[CHAPTER XXXV.]
"Ronald, there is something I should like to tell you," Walter Earle said to his friend, with a hesitating air, when they found themselves alone a little while that evening.
Ronald Valchester looked at the handsome face lying on the lace-trimmed pillow. Despite its pallor it wore a look of triumphant happiness.
"Walter, you need not tell me," he said, with outward calmness. "I have heard. Allow me to congratulate you."
"Thank you," Walter replied; then he looked at the calm, inscrutable face.
"Ronald, I hope you do not blame me," the wounded man went on, anxiously; "I have always loved her, but I would not have taken her from you, only you know you never could have married her with your views of divorce. But as I think differently from you I cannot believe I am wrong to marry her when I am better, and she is free."
"I do not blame you in the least," answered Ronald Valchester. "If I had known all the time how well you loved her, Walter, I must have marveled at your persistent efforts to convert me to your own belief that a legal divorce makes men and women free to marry again."