me that it really is all over, and that I shall have
to give her up after all?"

"Yes, you must," said Ernshaw. "If you have any faith worthy of the name
in God or man, it is your duty, not only as a man but as a Christian, to
say good-bye to her as man to woman. It is your duty, and you must."

"No, by God, I can't!" cried Maxwell, springing to his feet and facing
him with clenched teeth, set features, and hands gripped up into fists
as though he were facing an enemy rather than a friend.

Ernshaw rose slowly from his seat. His face seemed to Vane to be
transfigured. He looked him straight in the eyes, and said, in a voice
only a little above a whisper, and yet thrilling with an intense
emotion:

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain! You have
asked for my advice and my guidance, Maxwell. I have given them to you,
but not before I have sought for advice and counsel from an infinitely
higher Source. I believe I have had my answer. As I have had it so I
have given it to you. I have spent a good many hours thinking over this
problem of yours--and a harder problem few men have ever had to
solve--but my fixed and settled conviction is that during this last
conversation of yours with Miss Raleigh you bore yourself like a man;
you did your duty; you put your hand to the plough. You are not going to
look back now, are you?"

Vane dropped back into his seat and folded his hands over his eyes
again, and said with a note of weariness in his voice:

"Well, yes, old man, I suppose you're right, and yet, Ernshaw, it's very
hard, so hard that it seems almost impossible. They're coming up to
'Commem' to-morrow--I was obliged to ask them, you know. I should only
have to hold out my hand and feel hers in it and say that--well, that
I'd thought better of it, and everything would be just as it was before.
We could begin again just as if _that_ had never happened.

"You know it's all I've thought about, all I've worked for, ever since
we came back from India together. Honestly, old man, she really is--of
course, with the exception of the Governor--everything there is in the
world for me now. If I have to give her up, what else is there? You know
what I was going to do. Now that I've got my degree I should have a
splendid opening in the Foreign Office. The way would be absolutely
clear before me--a mere matter of brains and interest--and I know I've
got the interest--and I should be an Ambassador, perhaps a Prime