be your
conscience. There _is_ such a thing as duty; it speaks in your heart
and in mine, and tells us that we must part."

"You speak so lightly of parting. If you felt all that I--"

"My love is no shadow less than yours," she said, with earnestness
which was well nigh severity. "I have never wavered from you since I
knew you first."

"Ida!"

"I meant no reproach, but it will perhaps help you to think of that.
You _did_ love her, if it was only for a day, and that love will
return."

She moved from him, and he too rose.

"You shame me," he said, under his breath. "I am not worthy to touch
your hand."

"Yes," she returned, smiling amid her tears, "very worthy of all the
love I have given you, and of the love with which _she_ will make you
happy. I shall suffer, but the thought of your happiness will help me
to bear up and try to live a life you would not call ignoble. You will
do great things, and I shall hear of them, and be glad. Yes; I know
that is before you. You are one of those who cannot rest till they have
won a high place. I, too, have my work, and--"

Her voice failed.

"Shall we never see each other again, Ida?"

"Perhaps. In a few years we might meet, and be friends. But I dare not
think of that now."

They clasped hands, for one dread moment resisted the lure of eyes and
lips, and so parted.

CHAPTER XXXVII

FORBIDDEN

December was half through, and it was the eve of Maud Enderby's
marriage-day. Everything was ready for the morrow. Waymark had been
away in the South, and the house to which he would take his wife now
awaited their coming.

It was a foggy night. Maud had been for an hour to Our Lady of the
Rosary, and found it difficult to make her way back. The street lamps
were mere luminous blurs upon the clinging darkness, and the suspension
of the wonted traffic made the air strangely still. It was cold, that
kind of cold which wraps the limbs like a cloth soaked in icy water.
When she knocked at the door of her aunt's house, and it was opened to
her, wreaths of mist swept in and hung about the lighted hall. It
seemed colder within than without. Footsteps echoed here in the old
way, and voices lost themselves in a muffled resonance along the bare
white walls. The house was more tomb-like than ever on such a night as
thin To Maud's eyes the intruding fog shaped itself into ghostly
visages, which looked upon her with weird and woeful compassion. She
shuddered, and hastened u