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.

And oh! it was very cruel. His life seemed as much ended as if he had
taken his death-warrant, for life without hope was nothing worth. The
future he had fondly built up for both of them lay broken at his own
feet. Oh, the irony of it all! There were moments when evil passions
arose in his mind and startled him. Standing at the foot of the lone
crags of the sea he would break into wild peals of laughter, or
shriek out in rebellion against his sentence. But he was ashamed of
these impulses, and would sink away from the scene of them, though no
human eye had there been on him like a dog that is disgraced.

Yet he felt that like a man among men he could fight anything but
this relentless doom. Anything, anything--and he would not shrink.
Life and love, life and love--only these, and all would be well. But
no, ah! no, not for him was either; and creeping up in the dead of
night towards Lague, just that his eyes mi