by the first crushing blow. The Inevitable
had indeed placed its cruel hand upon his happiness; not all the
boundless wealth of his love, of his will and of his daring could ever
give Elsa back to him again.

"I had better go now, I suppose," he said.

"Mother will be here directly," she replied, "won't you see her?"

"Not just yet, I think. I thought of asking Pater Bonifacius if he could
give me a bed for a night. Pali bacsi might not be ready for me yet."

"But you will come to my farewell feast?" asked Elsa, with that
unconscious cruelty of which good women are so often capable.

"If you wish it, Elsa," he replied.

"I do wish it," she said, "and everyone will be so happy to see you.
They would think it strange if you did not come, for everyone will know
by then that you have returned."

"Then I will come," he concluded.

He went up to her and held out his hand; she put her own upon it. Of
course he did not ask for a kiss; he had no longer a right to that.
Somehow, in the last few moments a barrier seemed to have sprung up
between him and her which had obliterated all the past. He was a
stranger now to her and she to him; that day five years ago was as if it
had never been. Bela and her plighted troth to him stood now between
Andor and that past which he must forget.

But as he stood now holding her hand, he looked at her earnestly, and
her blue eyes, dimmed but serene, met his own gaze without flinching.

"The past, Elsa," he said, "is done with. Henceforth we shall be nothing
to one another. You will forget me easily enough. . . . I wish that I
had never come back to disturb the peace which I see is rapidly
spreading over your life. My only wish now is that with you it should be
peace. My heart has already given you up to Bela--but not
unconditionally, mind. . . . He must make you happy . . . I tell you
that he must," he reiterated, almost fiercely. "If he does not, he will
have to reckon with me. Heaven help him, I say, if he is ever unkind to
you. . . . I shall see it, I shall know it. . . . I shall not leave this
village till I am assured that he means to be kind--that he _is_ kind to
you, even though my heart should break in remaining a witness to your
happiness."

He stooped, and with the innate chivalry peculiar to the Hungarian
peasantry, he kissed the small, cold hand which trembled in his grasp:
he kissed it as a noble lord would kiss the hand of a princess. Then,
without looking on her agai