“But what can I say?” went on the lad passionately, “I must go; and—and God knows for how long, five or six years maybe; and I shall come back and find you—and find you——” and a sob rose up and silenced him.
“Hubert,” she said, turning and looking with a kind of wavering steadiness into his shadowed eyes, and even then noticing the clean-cut features and the smooth curve of his jaw with the firelight on it, “you ought not——”
“I know, I know; I promised my father; but there are some things I cannot bear. Of course I do not want you to promise anything; but I thought that if perhaps you could tell me that you thought—that you thought there would be no one else; and that when I came back——”
“Hubert,” she said again, resolutely, “it is impossible: our religions——”
“But I would do anything, I think. Besides, in five years so much may happen. You might become a Catholic—or—or, I might come to see that the Protestant Religion was nearly the same, or as true at least—or—or—so much might happen.—Can you not tell me anything before I go?”
A keen ray of hope had pierced her heart as he spoke; and she scarcely knew what she said.
“But, Hubert, even if I were to say——”
He seized her hands and kissed them again and again.
“Oh! God bless you, Isabel! Now I can go so happily. And I will not speak of it again; you can trust me; it will not be hard for you.”
She tried to draw her hands away, but he still held them tightly in his own strong hands, and looked into her face. His eyes were shining.