ithout _your_ consent and co-operation: and the
plan is this: we go from this place together--this same night--to some
unknown spot, some town, say a hundred miles hence--by train. There I
get two motors, and I in one, and you in the other, we separate, going
different ways. We shall thus never be able, however much we may want
to, to rediscover each other in all this wide world. That is my plan.'

She looked me in the face, smiling her smile: and the answer was not
long in coming.

'I will go in the tlain with you,' says she with slow decisiveness: 'but
where you leave me, there I will stay, till I die; and I will patiently
wait till my God convert you, and send you back to me.'

'That means that you refuse to do what I say?'

'Yes,' said she, bowing the head with great dignity.

'Well, you speak, not like a girl, Leda,' said I, 'but like a full woman
now. But still, reflect a minute.... O reflect! If you stayed where I
left you, I _should_ go back to you, and pretty soon, too: I know that I
should. Tell me, then--reflect well, and tell me--do you definitely
refuse to part with me?'

The answer was pretty prompt, cool, and firm:

'Yes; I lefuse.'

I left her then, took a turn down the path, and came back.

'Then,' said I, 'here are two matches in my grasp: be good enough to
draw one.'

_Now_ she was hit to the heart: I saw her eyes widen to the width of
horror, with a glassy stare: she had read of the drawing of lots in the
Bible: she knew that it meant death for me, or for her.

But she obeyed without a word, after one backward start and then a brief
hovering in decision of thumb and forefinger over my held-out hand. I
had fixed it in my mind that if she drew the shorter of the matches,
then she should die; if the longer, then I should die.

She drew the shorter....

* * * * *

This was only what I should have expected: for I knew that God loved
her, and hated me.

But instantly upon the first shock of the enormity that I should be her
executioner, I made my resolve: to drop shot, too, at the moment after
she dropped shot, so disposing my body, that it would fall half upon
her, and half by her, so that we might be close always: and that would
not be so bad, after all.

With a sudden movement I snatched the revolver from my pocket: she did
not move, except her white lips, which, I think, whispered:

'_Not yet_....'

I stood with hanging arm, forefinger on trigger, l