'Going for—for good?'
'Yes.'
He makes no effort to change her resolution—vents no protest—if that indeed be not one, and the strongest he could utter, that long groan with which he flings himself on a chair beside the table, and covers his face with his hands. She has reached the door. No one hinders her from opening it and leaving him, and yet she hesitates. Her sunk blue eyes look back at him half relentingly.
'Are you sure,' she says quaveringly, while her pale lips tremble piteously—'are you sure that you have nothing to say—nothing extenuating? I—I should be glad to hear it if you had. I—I—I—would try my very best to believe you.'
There is no answer. Only the mute appeal conveyed by that prone figure, with its despairing brown head fallen forwards on its clenched hands. Is it possible that he has not heard her? After a moment's vacillation, she retraces her uncertain steps till she stands beside him. Feeling her proximity, he looks up. At the sight of his face, she gives a start. Can it be she herself—she that had thought to have loved him so kindly—who has scored these new deep lines on brow and cheek? At the relenting evidenced by her back-coming, his dead hopes revive a little.
'Do you know what I did when I reached the walled garden last night?—I am afraid that you will not think the better of my common sense—I knelt down and kissed the place where I thought that your feet might have trod last year.'
'You did?' she says, with a catch in the breath; 'you did? and yet five minutes afterwards you were—oh!' breaking off with a low cry; 'and this is what men are like!'
He sees that his poor plea, instead of, as he had faintly hoped, a little bettering his position with her, has, read by the light of her mistaken knowledge, only served to intensify in her eyes the blackness of his inconstancy. Well, it is only one more added to the heap of earth's unnumbered injustices. It is only that Betty has done her work thoroughly this time. But he cannot bear to meet the reproachful anguish of the face that is bent above him, knowing that never on this side the grave can he set himself right with her. If only it might be for ever, instead of for these few hurrying moments, that he could shut out the light of day! The clock ticks on evenly. It sounds unnaturally loud and brutal in his singing ears; but its tick is not mixed with any light noise of retreating footsteps. She is still lingering near him, and by and by a long sob shudders out on the air.
'If you could persuade me that I was wrong,' she wails; 'if you could persuade me that it was some hideous delusion of my eyes—people have had such before now—that it existed only in my wicked fancy! Oh, if you could—if you could!'
'I cannot,' he replies hoarsely; 'you know that I cannot. Why do you torment me?' He has answered without looking up, still maintaining the attitude dictated by his despair; but when a little rustle of drapery tells him that she is really departing, he can no longer contain himself, but falls at her feet, crying out, 'Tell me how bad my punishment is to be!'