o, no, it
wouldn't, it couldn't. Oh, you can't think how hard it is to deny myself
the happiness you offer me. It's harder than all the miseries my husband
has inflicted upon me. But it wouldn't be happiness, because our sin
would stand between us. That would always be there, Martin--every day,
every night, as long as ever we lived. . . . We should never know one
really happy hour. I'm sure we should not. I should be unhappy myself
and I should make you unhappy. Oh, I daren't! I daren't! Don't ask me, I
beg--I beseech you."

I burst into tears after this, and there was a long silence between us.
Then Martin touched my arm and said with a gentleness that nearly broke
my heart:

"Don't cry, Mary. I give in. I find I have no will but yours, dear. If
_you_ can bear the present condition of things, I ought to be able to.
Let us go back to the house."

He raised me to my feet and we turned our faces homeward. All the
brightness of the day had gone for both of us by this time. The tide was
now far out. Its moaning was only a distant murmur. The shore was a
stretch of jagged black rocks covered with sea-weed.

SIXTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

Notwithstanding Martin's tenderness I had a vague fear that he had only
pretended to submit to my will, and before the day was over I had proof
of it.

During dinner we spoke very little, and after it was over we went out to
the balcony to sit on a big oak seat which stood there.

It was another soft and soundless night, without stars, very dark, and
with an empty echoing air, which seemed to say that thunder was not far
off, for the churning of the nightjar vibrated from the glen, and the
distant roar of the tide, now rising, was like the rumble of drums at a
soldier's funeral.

Just as we sat down the pleasure-steamer we had seen in the morning
re-crossed our breadth of sea on its way back to Blackwater; and lit up
on deck and in all its port-holes, it looked like a floating _cafe
chantant_ full of happy people, for they were singing in chorus a rugged
song which Martin and I had known all our lives--

_Ramsey town, Ramsey town, smiling by the sea,
Here's a health to my true love, wheresoe'er she be_.

When the steamer had passed into darkness, Martin said:

"I don't want to hurt you again, Mary, but before I go there's something
I want to know. . . . If you cannot divorce your husband, and if . . .
if you cannot come to me what . . . what is left to us?"

I tried