"Yes. My life is hard and sad enough; you would add to it shame and misery and undying remorse, and call that a proof of—love. Forgive me if I cannot see it in the same light as yourself."
"And I say you do not love me, and never did, or you would know——"
"Very well," she interrupts, "believe that. It is best that you should."
"And I am to go now?" he says, sorrowful and hesitating. "If you send me from you to-night, Lauraine, I will never come back. Remember that."
Both of them are hurt and angry now, both beset with cruel pain, and waging that terrible conflict with passionate love and wounded pride that is at once so ill-judged, and resentful a thing.
Lauraine looks steadily away from the entreating, watchful eyes; away, away to the far-off mountain range swept with faint grey clouds, silvered by the clear moonlight and the haze of the shining stars.
"If he only knew," she thinks, in the depths of her aching heart, "if he only, only knew!"
But he does not know. To him she is only cold, calculating, unloving. Right and pure he knows in her mode of loving and thinking; but what man who loves as Keith loves can see right and purity as they are?
"I have never asked you to come back," says Lauraine, faint and low, "and be very sure I never will. I am sorry that you are angry with me. Perhaps to-morrow you will be sorry too. But I know it is best."
"Good-bye then!"