d, "because
I know that you have not invented this to shield me, for I have felt
it also. See by it what you are to me. You are my master and my all. I
cannot withstand you if I would. I have little will apart from yours
if you choose to gainsay mine. And now promise me this upon your word.
Leave me uninfluenced; do not draw me to you to be your ruin. I make
no pretence, I have laid my life at your feet, but while I have any
strength to struggle against it, you shall never take it up unless you
can do so to your own honour, and that is not possible. Oh, my dear, we
might have been very happy together, happier than men and women often
are, but it is denied to us. We must carry our cross, we must crucify
the flesh upon it; perhaps so--who can say?--we may glorify the spirit.
I owe you a great deal. I have learnt much from you, Geoffrey. I have
learned to hope again for a Hereafter. Nothing is left to me now--but
that--that and an hour hence--your memory.

"Oh, why should I weep? It is ungrateful, when I have your love, for
which this misery is but a little price to pay. Kiss me, dear, and
go--and never see me more. You will not forget me, I know now that you
will _never_ forget me all your life. Afterwards--perhaps--who can tell?
If not, why then--it will indeed be best--to die."

* * * * *

It is not well to linger over such a scene as this. After all, too, it
is nothing. Only another broken heart or so. The world breaks so many
this way and the other that it can have little pleasure in gloating over
such stale scenes of agony.

Besides we must not let our sympathies carry us away. Geoffrey and
Beatrice deserved all they got; they had no business to put themselves
into such a position. They had defied the customs of their world,
and the world avenged itself upon them and their petty passions. What
happens to the worm that tries to burrow on the highways? Grinding
wheels and crushing feet; these are its portion. Beatrice and Geoffrey
point a moral and adorn a tale. So far as we can see and judge there was
no need for them to have plunged into that ever-running river of human
pain. Let them struggle and drown, and let those who are on the bank
learn wisdom from the sight, and hold out no hand to help them.

Geoffrey drew a ring from his finger and gave it to his love. It was a
common flat-sided silver ring that had been taken from the grave of a
Roman soldier: one peculiarity it had, however; on its inner surface
wer