to tell you that this must not go on any longer. I
came to my mind when you were gone, Mr. Alexander--I came to my mind!
I think that you are braw and noble, but in the way of loving, as love
is between man and woman, I have none for you--I have none for you!"

The sun appeared to dip, the fields to darken. Pain came to
Glenfernie, wildering and blinding. He stood silent.

"I might have known before you went--I might have known from that
first meeting, in May, in the glen! But I was a fool, and vague, and
willing, I suppose, to put tip of tongue to a land of sweetness! If,
mistaken myself, I helped you to mistake, I am bitter sorry and I ask
your forgiveness! But the thing, Glenfernie, the thing stands! It's
for us to part."

He stared at her dumbly. In every line of her, in every tone of her,
there was finality. He was tenacious of purpose, capable of
long-sustained and patient effort, but he seemed to know that, for
this life, purpose and effort here might as well be laid aside. The
knowledge wrapped him, quiet, gray, and utter. He put his hands to his
brow; he moved a few steps to and fro; he came to the wall and leaned
against it. It seemed to him that he regarded the clay-cold corpse of
his life.

"O the world!" cried Elspeth. "When we are little it seems so little!
If you suffer, I am sorry."

"Present suffering may be faced if there's light behind."

"There's not this light, Glenfernie.... O world! if there is some
other light--"

"And time will do naught for me, Elspeth?"

"No. Time will do naught for you. It is over! And the day goes down
and the world spins on."

They stood apart, without speaking, under their hands the heaped
stones of the wall. The swallows skimmed; a tinkling of sheep-bells
was heard; the stubble and the moor beyond the fields lay in gold, in
sunken green and violet; the hilltops met the sky in a line long,
clean, remote, and still. Elspeth spoke.

"I am going now, back home. Let's say good-by here, each wishing the
other some good in, or maybe out of, this carefu' world!"

"You, also, are unhappy. Why?"

"I am not! Do I seem so? I am sorry for unhappiness--that is all! Of
course we grow older," said Elspeth, "older and wiser. But you nor no
one must think that I am unhappy! For I am not." She put out her hands
to him. "Let us say good-by!"

"Is it so? Is it so?"

"Never make doubt of that! I want you to see that it is clean
snapped--clean gone!"

She gave him her hands