en he gathered his resolution.
"There is one thing I MUST say."

"Well?" she said, surprised and abruptly forgetting the recent argument.
"I ask no return. But--"

Then he stopped. "I won't say it. It's no good. It would be rot from
me--now. I wasn't going to say anything. Good-bye."

She looked at him with a startled expression in her eyes. "No," she
said. "But don't forget you are going to work. Remember, brother Chris,
you are my friend. You will work. You are not a very strong man, you
know, now--you will forgive me--nor do you know all you should. But what
will you be in six years' time?"

He stared hard in front of him still, and the lines about his weak mouth
seemed to strengthen. He knew she understood what he could not say.

"I'll work," he said, concisely. They stood side by side for a moment.
Then he said, with a motion of his head, "I won't come back to THEM. Do
you mind? Going back alone?"

She took ten seconds to think. "No." she said, and held out her hand,
biting her nether lip. "GOOD-BYE," she whispered.

He turned, with a white face, looked into her eyes, took her hand
limply, and then with a sudden impulse, lifted it to his lips. She would
have snatched it away, but his grip tightened to her movement. She felt
the touch of his lips, and then he had dropped her fingers and turned
from her and was striding down the slope. A dozen paces away his foot
turned in the lip of a rabbit hole, and he stumbled forward and almost
fell. He recovered his balance and went on, not looking back. He never
once looked back. She stared at his receding figure until it was small
and far below her, and then, the tears running over her eyelids now,
turned slowly, and walked with her hands gripped hard together behind
her, towards Stoney Cross again.

"I did not know," she whispered to herself. "I did not understand. Even
now--No, I do not understand."

XLI. THE ENVOY

So the story ends, dear Reader. Mr. Hoopdriver, sprawling down there
among the bracken, must sprawl without our prying, I think, or listening
to what chances to his breathing. And of what came of it all, of the six
years and afterwards, this is no place to tell. In truth, there is no
telling it, for the years have still to run. But if you see how a mere
counter-jumper, a cad on castors, and a fool to boot, may come to feel
the little insufficiencies of life, and if he has to any extent won
your sympathies, my end is attained. (If it is not atta