ns he
left the city and hastened to her side. His heart beat wildly as he
paced with her in the moonlight up and down the terrace overlooking the
river. It was early spring--just a year since her rescue from the
island. Thronging memories surged in her heart, and kept her from
noticing the silence of her companion, till at last he spoke.

"Marguerite," he said, for he now called her by her name, at her own
request, "I have to leave Paris to-morrow. There is hot work awaiting my
sword in the south, and I must delay no longer."

She turned to him in sudden alarm; the news was quite unexpected.

"My friend--my brother," she said impulsively, "do not leave me! Not
yet, not yet!"

The moment had come. The love pent up in La Pommeraye's heart would be
restrained no longer, and burst from him in a torrent of passionate
words. She could not stop him now; it was too late. She stood pale and
silent as he poured forth all the love and longing of those weary years.
Her heart was moved with a great compassion for him; but when,
encouraged by her silence, he touched her hand, she drew it suddenly
from him. Before her rose the dead face of him who had been as truly her
husband as if a priest had blessed their marriage; she felt once more
the touch of her child's lips at her breast; she saw again that double
grave on the lonely hillside so many thousand miles away. She had loved
once, and her heart was dead and buried in that far-off grave. Life held
no second love for her, henceforth there was nothing left her but the
memory of that which once had been. But her friend, her only support and
comfort, must she lose him too? Heaven was cruel indeed to her. She
covered her face with her hands.

"God help me!" she said shudderingly. "It cannot be."

He thought she was relenting. In an instant he had taken her hands in
his, while he pleaded passionately for time, for hope; no promise, only
permission to spend his life in her service, only a word to carry with
him on his journey. But she had regained her self-control, and spoke now
with a quiet, sad decision that was as a death-knell to his heart.

"My friend," she said, "I would have saved you this if I could. I have
tried to spare you, and"--her voice trembled--"to spare myself. Hush,"
as he was about to interrupt, "it is because I do love you--though not
in the way you wish--that I would have spared us both this parting. You
are all I have left in the world--if I lose you, I am inde