d at her
foolish alarm.

I told her that it was my intention to start for England in the morning;
that this was the only moment I had, and would be the last interview: my
rights, if I possessed any, and I was not aware that I did, I threw down.

'You throw down one end of the chain,' she said.

'In the name of heaven, then,' cried I, 'release yourself.'

She shook her head. 'That is not my meaning.'

Note the predicament of a lover who has a piece of dishonesty lurking in
him. My chilled self-love had certainly the right to demand the
explanation of her coldness, and I could very well guess that a word or
two drawn from the neighbourhood of the heart would fetch a warmer
current to unlock the ice between us, but feeling the coldness I
complained of to be probably a suspicion, I fixed on the suspicion as a
new and deeper injury done to my loyal love for her, and armed against
that I dared not take an initiative for fear of unexpectedly justifying
it by betraying myself.

Yet, supposing her inclination to have become diverted, I was ready
frankly to release her with one squeeze of hands and take all the pain of
she pain, and I said: 'Pray, do not speak of chains.'

'But they exist. Things cannot be undone for us two by words.'

The tremble as of a strung wire in the strenuous pitch of her voice
seemed to say she was not cold, though her gloved hand resting its
finger-ends on the table, her restrained attitude, her very calm eyes,
declared the reverse. This and that sensation beset me in turn.

We shrank oddly from uttering one another's Christian name. I was the
first with it; my 'Ottilia!' brought soon after 'Harry' on her lips, and
an atmosphere about us much less Arctic.

'Ottilia, you have told me you wish me to go to England.'

'I have.'

'We shall be friends.'

'Yes, Harry; we cannot be quite divided; we have that knowledge for our
present happiness.'

'The happy knowledge that we may have our bone to gnaw when food's
denied. It is something. One would like possibly, after expulsion out of
Eden, to climb the gates to see how the trees grow there. What I cannot
imagine is the forecasting of any joy in the privilege.'

'By nature or system, then, you are more impatient than I, for I can,'
said Ottilia. She added: 'So much of your character I divined early. It
was part of my reason for wishing you to work. You will find that hard
work in England--but why should I preach to you Harry, you have called m