ar that,
Gilbert."

She looked up at him with an appealing expression through her tears--an
innocent, half-childish look that went to his heart--and he clasped her
to his breast, believing that this proposal to set him free had been
indeed nothing more than a girlish caprice.

"My dearest, my life is bound up with your love," he said. "Nothing can
part us except your ceasing to love me."

CHAPTER VII.

"GOOD-BYE."

The hour for the final parting came at last, and Gilbert Fenton turned
his back upon the little gate by which he had watched Marian Nowell
standing upon that first summer Sunday evening which sealed his destiny.

He left Lidford weary at heart, weighed down by a depression he had
vainly struggled against, and he brooded over his troubles all the way
back to town. It seemed as if all the hopes that had made life so sweet
to him only a week ago had been swept away. He could not look beyond that
dreary Australian exile; he could not bring his thoughts to bear upon the
time that was to come afterwards, and which need be no less bright
because of this delay.

"She may die while I am away," he thought. "O God, if that were to
happen! If I were to come back and find her dead! Such things have been;
and men and women have borne them, and gone on living."

He had one more duty to perform before he left England. He had to say
good-bye to John Saltram, whom he had not seen since they parted that
night at Lidford. He could not leave England without some kind of
farewell to his old friend, and he had reserved this last evening for the
duty.

He went to the Pnyx on the chance of finding Saltram there, and failing
in that, ate his solitary dinner in the coffee-room. The waiters told him
that Mr. Saltram had not been at the club for some weeks. Gilbert did not
waste much time over his dinner, and went straight from the Pnyx to the
Temple, where John Saltram had a second-floor in Figtree-court.

Mr. Saltram was at home. It was his own sonorous voice which answered
Gilbert's knock, bidding him enter with a muttered curse upon the
interruption by way of addendum. The room into which Mr. Fenton went upon
receiving this unpromising invitation was in a state of chaotic
confusion. An open portmanteau sprawled upon the floor, and a whole
wardrobe of masculine garments seemed to have been shot at random on to
the chairs near it; a dozen soda-water bottles, full and empty, were
huddled in one corner; a tea-tray to