Where is he now,
that poor man who loves you? Rachel, if you had ever known despair, you
would not thrust a fellow creature down into it."

"I have known it," said Rachel, hoarsely.

"Were not you deserted once? You were deserted to very little purpose,
if after that you can desert another. Go back in your mind,
and--remember. Where you stood once he stands now. You and his sin have
put him there. You and his sin have tied him to his stake. Will you
range yourself for ever on the side of his sin? Will you stand by and
see him perish?"

Silence; like the silence round a death-bed.

"He is in a great strait. Only love can save him."

Rachel flung out her arms with an inarticulate cry.

"I will forgive him," she said. "I will forgive him."

CHAPTER LII

"Les ames dont j'aurai besoin,
Et les etoiles sont trop loin;
Je mourral dans un coin."

How Hugh shook off Lady Newhaven when she followed him out of the Palace
he did not know. There had been some difficulty. She had spoken to him,
had urged something upon him. But he had got rid of her somehow, and had
found himself sitting in his bedroom at the Southminster Hotel. Anything
to be alone! He had felt that was the one thing in life to attain. But
now that he was alone, solitude suddenly took monstrous and hideous
proportions, and became a horror to flee from. He could not bear the
face of a fellow-creature. He could not bear this ghoul of solitude.
There was no room for him between these great millstones. They pressed
upon him till he felt they were crushing him to death between them. In
vain he endeavored to compose himself, to recollect himself. But
exhaustion gradually did for him what he could not do for himself.

Rachel had thrown him over. He had always known she would, and--she had.

They were to have been married in a few weeks; three weeks and one day.
He marked a day off every morning when he waked. He had thought of her
as his wife till the thought had become part of himself. Its roots were
in his inmost being. He tore it out now, and looked at it apart from
himself, as a man bleeding and shuddering looks upon a dismembered limb.

The sweat broke from Hugh's forehead. The waiting and daily parting had
seemed unbearable, that short waiting of a few weeks. Now she would
never be his. That long, ever-growing hunger of the heart would never be
appeased. She had taken herself away, taking away with her her dear
hands and her faith