ed alone."

She stopped a moment. There were no tears in the wide, dark eyes as she
looked straight before her, over the gleaming river, but her face was
white as death in the moonlight, and the lines about her mouth told of
the hidden depths of feeling beneath that quiet exterior. Charles had
sprung to his feet, an impetuous outburst on his lips, but she silenced
him with uplifted hand.

"Come," she said, "let us continue our walk, and I will tell you what I
have thought I should tell to no living being on earth."

And there, with tearless eyes and in a voice that never faltered, she
told him the whole story of those three years on the island, omitting
nothing, giving the outlines clearly and briefly, but with a vividness
which burned the details on Charles' throbbing brain as if they had been
branded with a hot iron.

"And now," she said, as she finished and turned to him, lifting her calm
eyes to his pale and hopeless face, "now you will see why it is
impossible that I should give you what you ask. My life was Claude's; I
gave myself utterly to him. He suffered with me, he died for me; I have
nothing left but his memory, but to that I shall be true till I die. My
friend, do you understand _now_?"

He was on his knees before her. She gave him her hands unresistingly,
and he laid his hot forehead against them for an instant. Then he looked
up at her, and she saw that indeed he understood.

Her face, as she met his look, was full of an infinite tenderness and
pity. Laying her hand gently on his head, she stooped and kissed him
once upon the brow. The whole manner of the action was so austere, so
full of the sadness and remoteness of one whom a vast, impassable gulf
separates for ever from all human and familiar intercourse, that it told
Charles more plainly than any words could have done, the hopelessness of
his love. He bowed his head in silence a moment, then pressing his lips
passionately to her hand, he rose and left her.

She never saw him again. When she realised that he was indeed gone, that
the last link which bound her to her past was broken, she began to feel
bitterly the utter loneliness of her lot. Alone in the world, without
kith or kin; alone, without the possibility of ever unburdening her
heart to any human being, the old madness which had stared her in the
face on the Isle of Demons seemed about to return.

But she was to have a noble salvation. Her uncle's estates were now
hers. The wars had