Then he turned to go, but Greeba caught him by both hands.
"Jason," she murmured, "It is true I cannot love you, but if there was another name for love that is not—"
He twisted back to her as she spoke, and his face was unutterably mournful to see. "Don't look at me like that," he said, and drew away.
She felt her face flush deep, for she was ashamed. Love was her pole-star. What was Jason's? Only the blankness of despair.
"Oh, my heart will break," she cried. "Jason," she cried again, and again she grasped his hands, and again their eyes met, and then the brave girl put her quivering lips to his.
"Ah, no," he said, in a husky voice, and he broke from her embrace.
CHAPTER VI.
Esau's Bitter Cry.
Shrinking from every human face, Jason turned in his dumb despair towards the sea, for the moan of its long dead waves seemed to speak to him in a voice of comfort if not of cheer. The year had deepened to autumn, and the chill winds that scattered the salt spray, the white curves of the breakers, the mists, the dapple-gray clouds, the scream of the sea fowl, all suited with his mood, for at the fountains of his own being the great deeps were broken up.
It was Tuesday, and every day thereafter until Saturday he haunted the shore, the wild headland to seaward, and the lonesome rocks on the south. There, bit by bit, the strange and solemn idea of unrequited love was borne in upon him. It was very hard to understand. For one short day the image of a happy love had stood up before his mind, but already that day was dead. That he should never again clasp her hand whom he loved, that all was over between them—it was painful, it was crushing.