She looked up at him with a startled air and drew back. "You go away; you are not ill, are you? Yes, I think you are ill. You were ill that night when that man Jackson came to dine here and cast his spell on you. You have never been well since. At night I have heard you call out strange things. Yes, if you like, we will go away--you and I, to Ava; it is cool and pleasant there, and you will get well. You want rest, and you are tired. Is it not so? You said so that night." The woman seemed to know of the evil that hung over her, and was making a desperate fight. All the pleasure that had brightened her face left it, and left it in a moment haggard and wan. She had expected this crisis a hundred times, and a hundred times nothing had come. Still, the feeling that she was on the brink of a precipice never left her. She knew that some day would come to her, as it came to all women of her class, that parting which left the man free as air and the woman in reality still in an abyss. This spectre was always in shadow before her, unseen but felt, and now--she knew that it was coming--she gave a quick gasp after her speech and waited. "No, Ma Mie," said Hawkshawe, and he threw a very tender inflection in his voice. "No, we can not go together this time. I want to go home to my own country. I have not seen it for many years. I will come back again, and in the meantime you must wait for me at your home. You have money. This"--he touched the bracelet on the shuddering arm--"and other things. Besides, I will see that you have more. I intend to go in about a month, and it would be well if you were to start for Ava in, say, a fortnight. Bah Hmoay will take you--or shall I send for some of your people? There, don't cry!" He tried to draw her again toward him, but she broke from his arms with an angry sob. "You! you! you! To do this!" she gasped. "You, the father of my dead child! You, who vowed and swore--you, who came with humble entreaty to me! Oh, I was a fool, a fool! All women are fools, and all men liars! Do you think my heart is a stone? Have I not been faithful? Ah, Hawkshawe, do not send me away! See, I will follow you as a slave to the uttermost parts of the earth. Don't go; I know you are not coming back--don't," and she sank on her knees with a cry that came from the soul. It would have melted any heart but Alban Hawkshawe's. "Confound it!" he said, pulling savagely at his mustache, "I must end this somehow.--Look here, Ma Mie, look at the matter sensibly; don't be a fool."