rying. And then when he had said good-bye
to her, putting out his hand to take hers for the last time, she
declined that. 'Nay,' she had said; 'this parting will bear no
farewell.'

Having left her after that fashion Paul Montague could not return home
with very high spirits. Had she insisted on his taking that letter
with the threat of the horsewhip as the letter which she intended to
write to him,--that letter which she had shown him, owning it to be
the ebullition of her uncontrolled passion, and had then destroyed,--
he might at any rate have consoled himself with thinking that, however
badly he might have behaved, her conduct had been worse than his. He
could have made himself warm and comfortable with anger, and could
have assured himself that under any circumstances he must be right to
escape from the clutches of a wildcat such as that. But at the last
moment she had shown that she was no wild cat to him. She had melted,
and become soft and womanly. In her softness she had been exquisitely
beautiful; and as he returned home he was sad and dissatisfied with
himself. He had destroyed her life for her,--or, at least, had created
a miserable episode in it which could hardly be obliterated. She had
said that she was all alone, and had given up everything to follow
him,--and he had believed her. Was he to do nothing for her now? She
had allowed him to go, and after her fashion had pardoned him the wrong
he had done her. But was that to be sufficient for him,--so that he
might now feel inwardly satisfied at leaving her, and make no further
inquiry as to her fate? Could he pass on and let her be as the wine
that has been drunk,--as the hour that has been enjoyed as the day
that is past?

But what could he do? He had made good his own escape. He had resolved
that, let her be woman or wild cat, he would not marry her, and in
that he knew he had been right. Her antecedents, as now declared by
herself, unfitted her for such a marriage. Were he to return to her he
would be again thrusting his hand into the fire. But his own selfish
coldness was hateful to him when he thought that there was nothing to
be done but to leave her desolate and lonely in Mrs Pipkin's lodgings.

During the next three or four days, while the preparations for the
dinner and the election were going on, he was busy in respect to the
American railway. He again went down to Liverpool, and at Mr
Ramsbottom's advice prepared a letter to the board of direc