did so he began softly to hum to himself, and
the words which he found himself humming were:

"'Twas here we last parted, 'twas here we first met."

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

"DEAD SEPARATE SOULS..."

She turned as he overtook her. For a moment they thus stood face to
face. Then he spoke.

"I have come to say good-bye."

"To say--good-bye?" echoed Mona, dully, staring at him as though she
were walking in her sleep.

"Yes. There is a gulf between us now such as can never be bridged,
never. It is not good that you should even so much as speak with a
murderer. A murderer, I repeat."

The faces of both were white as death. The frames of both were rigid
and motionless, as they stood confronting each other beneath the
willows--there, where they had first met, there, where those passionate
words of undying love had been interchanged, there, where those long,
long kisses had stamped their seal upon that love. And here they had
met again--to part.

"Roden, say it was not true!" she gasped at last. "You were acquitted
at the trial. It is not true; it cannot be true! Say it is not; say it
is not!"

"But, what if it is?"

The words forced themselves out with something of a snarl. His lips
seemed drawn back, and his eyes glowed like those of a cornered wild
beast, as he watched her troubled face.

"But it is not! No, you could never have done such a thing--you! You
could never have been a cold-blooded midnight murderer, and robber. No,
Roden, I will not believe it!"

"But you do believe it. You believed it from the first, because that
half-start away from me when our eyes first met this morning meant
nothing short of belief. That little act of shrinking fixed my mind
irrevocably--reft a gulf between us never to be passed in this life. A
cold-blooded midnight murderer--and robber--_and_ robber!" he repeated;
and now indeed the expression of his face was more than ever like that
of a dangerous animal at bay. "And you believe that!"

"But say it is not true! Oh, Roden, say it! Your bare word will be
sufficient to restore me, to restore us both, to the blissful heaven we
were in before!" she adjured, her voice quivering with anguish.

"Nothing on earth will ever restore that. You killed the possibility
that little lightning-like moment when you half turned away from me,
looked at me with doubting horror. Now I will say nothing--nothing, you
understand. Form your own opinion and hold it, for h