elf: "Enough. Now you will go home
and face life. At least you can try to do some good in the world,
and with your great wealth make some poor creatures happy. You have
behaved according to your own idea of gratitude and honor. No one
asked you to do it; therefore, why sit there and growl at fate? Have
courage to carry the thing through. No more contemptible repinings."

* * * * *

Far away up the hills there is a path that leads to an open space--a
tiny peep out over the tree-tops, sheer precipices below. I would go
there for the last time, and to-morrow return to England.

The climb was steep. I was a little out of breath, and leaned on the
stone ledge to rest myself when I arrived at the top. I was quite
alone.

The knife on my chatelaine caught in the lichen and dragged at the
chain. It angered me. I took it off the twisted ring and looked at it.

"Little 'ill omen,' as he called you, is it your fault that once fate,
once honor, once gratitude to a woman have kept me from my love? Well,
I shall throw you away now, then I shall have no link left to remind
me of foolish things that might have been."

I lifted my arm, and with all my might flung the tiny, glittering
thing out into the air. It fell far away down among the tree-tops in
the valley.

Then I turned to go down the hill. I had done with ridiculous
sentiment, which I had always disliked and despised.

Footsteps were coming towards me up the long, winding path. It was a
lonely place. I hoped it was not one of the fat German Jews who had
followed me once or twice. Ugly creatures!--hardly human, they seemed
to me. I wished I had Roy with me. He had gone with McGreggor into the
town.

A bend in the path hid the person from view until we met face to face.

And then I saw it was Antony, and it seemed as if my heart stopped
beating.

"At last I have found you, Ambrosine, sweetheart!" he said, and he
clasped me in his arms and kissed my lips.

Then I forgot Lady Tilchester and gratitude and honor and
self-control, because in nature I find there is a stronger force than
all these things, and that is the _touch_ of the one we love.

* * * * *

It was perhaps an hour afterwards. The shadows looked blue among the
pine-trees.

We sat on a little wooden bench. There was a warm, still silence. Not
a twig moved. A joy so infinite seemed everywhere around.

"It was all over between us ten years