he
had known so frequently just the overpowering wish for the possession of
the woman he loved best, but now she stood to him as the history of his
moral existence here below, and he felt as if, in missing her, he should
miss the object and crown of his life.

At last silence became intolerable. He moved as though he wanted to
speak and could not, and then he said huskily, almost gruffly:

"It is not 'good-bye' to-day, of course," and then he laughed at the
feebleness of his own words.

Rose turned to him at that, and he was not really surprised to see that
the tears were flowing rapidly over her cheeks--tears so large that they
splashed like big raindrops on the white hands which were clasped as
they hung before her. But that made it no easier. He thought very little
of those tears; he felt even a little bitter at their apparent
bitterness. He hardened at the sight of those tears; they made him feel
that he could leave her with more dignity, more firmness in his own
mind, than he had ever thought would be possible.

"Vous pleurez et vous etes roi?" He hardly knew that he had muttered the
words as he so often muttered a quotation to himself. But Rose did not
hear them. She was too preoccupied with her own thoughts and feelings to
notice him closely. Ah! if she had but known before what it would be to
lose him! She was horrified as she felt her self-control failing her,
and an enormous agony entering into possession of all her faculties. She
was so startled, so amazed at this revelation of herself. If she had
felt less, she would have thought more for him. She did not think for a
moment what that silent standing by her side meant for him. She knew at
last the selfishness of passion. She wanted him as she had never wanted
anyone or anything before. She could only think of the craving of her
own heart, the extraordinary trouble that possessed it. Those who have
had a passing acquaintance with love, those who have sown brief passages
of love thoughts over their early youth, can form no notion of what
that first surrender meant to Rose. "Too late!" cried the tyrant love,
the only tyrant that can carry conviction by its mere fiat to the
innermost recesses of a nature. "Too late!--it might have been, but not
now; it is all your own doing; you made him suffer once; you are the
only one to suffer now. You are crying now the easy tears of a child,
but there are years and years before you when the tears will not come,
call for