here; the cottagers shall row the boat up,' she said.

'Somewhere--anywhere,' said Beauchamp. 'But I must speak. I will tell
you now. I do not think you to blame--barely; not in my sight; though no
man living would have suffered as I should. Probably some days more and
you would have been lost. You looked for me! Trust your instinct now
I'm with you as well as when I'm absent. Have you courage? that 's the
question. You have years to live. Can you live them in this place--with
honour? and alive really?'

Renee's eyes grew wide; she tried to frown, and her brows merely
twitched; to speak, and she was inarticulate. His madness, miraculous
penetration, and the super-masculine charity in him, unknown to the
world of young men in their treatment of women, excited, awed, and
melted her. He had seen the whole truth of her relations with M.
d'Henriel!--the wickedness of them in one light, the innocence in
another; and without prompting a confession he forgave her. Could she
believe it? This was love, and manly love.

She yearned to be on her feet, to feel the possibility of an escape from
him.

She pointed to a landing. He sprang to the bank. 'It could end in
nothing else,' he said, 'unless you beat cold to me. And now I have your
hand, Renee! It's the hand of a living woman, you have no need to tell
me that; but faithful to her comrade! I can swear it for her--faithful
to a true alliance! You are not married, you are simply chained: and you
are terrorized. What a perversion of you it is! It wrecks you. But with
me? Am I not your lover? You and I are one life. What have we suffered
for but to find this out and act on it? Do I not know that a woman
lives, and is not the rooted piece of vegetation hypocrites and tyrants
expect her to be? Act on it, I say; own me, break the chains, come
to me; say, Nevil Beauchamp or death! And death for you? But you are
poisoned and thwart-eddying, as you live now: worse, shaming the Renee
I knew. Ah-Venice! But now we are both of us wiser and stronger: we
have gone through fire. Who foretold it? This day, and this misery and
perversion that we can turn to joy, if we will--if you will! No heart to
dare is no heart to love!--answer that! Shall I see you cower away from
me again? Not this time!'

He swept on in a flood, uttered mad things, foolish things, and things
of an insight electrifying to her. Through the cottager's garden,
across a field, and within the park gates of Tourdestelle it co