He looked at her with a kind of despair. "Rona, I must go! I never thought that it could be as terrible as this to say good-by!"
She looked at him helplessly, her eyes swimming in tears.
—"And I have nothing to give you—nothing to offer but my wretched self——"
He dived into his pocket, brought out a sixpence, and with a pair of pocket-pliers, divided it neatly in two pieces. Then, with a piercer in his pocket-knife, he drilled a tiny hole in each half, and made her promise that she would suspend the charm about her own neck, as he would about his—as the only tangible sign of their plighted vows.
There was but a moment, after this ceremony, to be spent in leave-taking. Felix, to his own utter astonishment, broke down completely.
"You'll be true to me, Rona—you won't fail me?" he gasped, half-blinded by the choking tears; and Rona, with those tears wet upon her cheek, promised, knowing no more than a kitten what she was promising, nor why.
For one instant their lips were together, the young man trembling, ashamed of his weakness, his hot heart filled with a surge of emotion so unexpected as to be to him alarming; and then he was running from her, not daring to look back, stumbling away in the evening dusk with a heart more joyful, but with pangs more dire than he had imagined possible.
And now the future lay before him, like the battle-field upon which to-morrow's conflict should take place. To the old Felix he had bidden farewell. He had now no mind to regenerate society, only to make one woman happy. Rona, who knew the worst of him—Rona, who had come to him at the moment when he touched bottom—Rona loved him.
Then to conquer the world was a mere detail. It could be done, and he, Felix, was the man to do it.
* * * * * * *