that you'd married--your cousin. I
believed you loved him. I was in a German hospital--broken to
pieces--disfigured. I ought to have died, but somehow I couldn't die. I
had to live on. Later, I escaped. I came here--where _you_ had lived.
God knows, all through I tried to do for the best--your best. Nothing
else mattered. I wrote that book--for you, only for you! And you know
the rest. You turned my hell to heaven. I was--almost happy, except for
what you suffered. But I dared not have you come here. I cabled. I was
going away--"

She pressed her head back against his shoulder, and looked up at him.
"You were going--" The words burst from her on a high note of sharp
reproach, but she caught them back with a sigh of joy. "You didn't go!"
she breathed. "God wouldn't have let you go. He put it in my heart to
leave England the day after I wrote. Ah, we're not dreaming, and we're
not dead! We're alive, and we love each other better than all the
world. I know now that you do love me, or you couldn't hold me and kiss
me so. You couldn't have made such a sacrifice--the sacrifice of your
very life and self for me. It was like you--like you! The mistake was
my fault, not yours. But I'll make up to you for it all, and you will
make up to me. We'll never part for an hour again."

"You don't know what you're saying, Barbara," he reminded her. "John
Denin's dead. We can't bring him back to life. Too many interests are
involved, yours first of all, but others, too. It would be selfish and
cruel for me to take you so--"

"You don't take me," she said. "I give myself, I give myself to John
Sanbourne, as I gave myself to John Denin."

"But we'll be poor," he told her. "John Denin's money can't come to
us--"

"I have enough of my own now. And if I hadn't, I'd beg with you. We
could be tramps together."

Denin laughed out joyously, almost roughly, and clasped her tight. "It
won't come to that, my darling! Perhaps I can write another book. Yes,
I can! It shall be called 'The Honeymoon.'"

"Let us go away somewhere," Barbara implored, "where nobody will know
us, and we can love each other in peace till we die: for we belong to
one another in God's sight and our own. Yes, till we die. And
afterwards--afterwards! Oh, you have taught me that!"

"I have pledged myself to go to Serbia," Denin said.

"Then I'll go to Serbia with you, that's all! What does it matter
where?"

"And the world--and Gorston Old Hall?" he heard himself aski