There was a ready answer leaping to her lips. But she could not utter it. At least, not yet. So again she hung her head, and again there fell a pause, in which she was desperately seeking for another line of attack upon his obstinately proud humility. Arguments to reason failing her, she availed herself of an argument to sentiment. She drew from the bodice of her gown a rubbed and faded tasselled glove. She held it out to him, looking up at him, and he saw that her eyes were wet.
“Here is something that belongs to you, at least. Take it, Randal. Take it, since it is all that you will have of me.”
Almost in hesitancy he took that little glove, still warm and fragrant from sweet contact with her, and retained also the hand that proffered it.
“It ... it shall again be a talisman,” he said softly, “to keep me worthy as ... as it did not keep me once.” Then he bowed over the hand he held, and pressed it to his lips. “Good-bye, and God guard you ever, Nan.”
He would have disengaged his hand, but she clutched it firmly now.
“Randal!” she cried sharply, desperately driven to woo this man who would not woo her despite her clear invitation. In gentle, sorrowing rebuke she added: “Can you, then, really think of leaving me again?”
His face assumed the pallor of death, and his limbs trembled under him.
“What else is possible?” he asked her miserably.
“That is a question you had best answer for yourself.”