hem to herself in the silence of an empty studio,
and now face to face with me, listening and expectant, they had become
difficult, impossible. I leant forward, the blood hot in my own cheek,
a dull flame waking in every vein.

"Darling," I said, taking her soft left hand within both my own, "I
cannot tell exactly what you wish to tell me; but listen--I had
finished all, and had things not turned out as they have I should have
been starting now to come to you and say, 'Lucia I am free now to be
your slave.' All this year we have been separated I have thought only
of you, waking and sleeping, longed for you, dreamed of you, lived in
the hour of our re-union, desired with an intensity beyond all words
that day that gives you to me; and, forty hours back, that day, Lucia,
seemed so near, but now--dearest"--

I stopped, choked, suffocated with the weight of hopeless, despairing
passion that fell back upon itself within me.

Lucia leant forward, the beating, palpitating bosom was close to me,
her white, nerveless hand lay close in mine.

"And now, Victor?"

"Now all is vanished. I am exactly in the position where I was when I
left you in England a year ago."

"And what do you mean--what are we--what?"--

"My sweet, what can we do? I must recommence. I must work on another
year."

I felt the burning, tremulous fingers grow cold in mine. Her face paled
till it was like white stone. Then suddenly she withdrew her hand from
my clasp, and started to her feet.

"Victor, I cannot! no, I cannot! I cannot wait another year! It will
kill me!" she said, passionately, looking away from me, and pacing a
short length of the floor backwards and forwards before me, as I rose,
too, and stood watching dizzily the incomparable figure pass and
repass, hardly master of myself.

"Dearest," she continued; "this is what I came to say--let us marry
now. I thought you would have successfully finished your work, and we
might do so; but now, now, even as it is, let it be as it is, let it be
unfinished, and still, still let us marry. There is no real bar as
there might be. There is no question of wrong to any one. We are to be
married--it cannot matter to any one when we are. Continue to work
afterwards. I am willing to be second always, in every thing, to your
work. But don't drive me from you altogether. Let me stay with you now
I have come. Let us marry now--here. Let us go before some
official--the Maire, or some one, or English consul,