He came closer to her, leaned over, his eyes searching her face. "Because I shall always love you, always, and I'll never give you up either. Never! I shall always hope, strive for you, unless," he added brokenly, "the day comes when you marry some other man. But," he pleaded, "you will not, you will not." He slipped his hand over hers where it rested on the table, "And I love you, will love you always!" He waited a second in silence, straightened himself, and, though he was deathly white, smiled at her. Then he turned on his heel and went softly out of the room. Before Frances could waken Roxie, asleep before the kitchen fire, she heard the outer door slam. She ran out into the hall. Her father stood there, anxious perplexity in his face. "Edward has gone!" he cried in dismay. "Gone! Father, why did you let him? Why didn't you _make_ him stay?" "He didn't give me a chance"--the professor was thoroughly provoked--"just said he was going! Listen!" as door and window rattled in a great gust and they could hear the rain lashing across the quadrangle and beating on corridor and house-top. Frances could find no word to say of the horror and fear which possessed her, remembering all the way he would go through the storm homewards, the desolate road and wind-whipped, bleak fields and woods, and, down there between the hills, the narrow valley, torrent-riven. XXI At the breakfast the professor was irritably anxious. "I wish I knew of some way of getting at Montague this morning; he ought to have a telephone put in!" "You know why he doesn't," said Frances gently. "I couldn't sleep last night, thinking of him." The cup Frances held clattered in her trembling hands. Sleep! She remembered the big fire, the bright light she had kept all the night; she remembered how she had walked her room, had undressed, gone to bed, gotten up, dressed again, and sat by the fire shaking like the trees outside before the heavy blasts; remembered how she had resented the blue of the sky, and the rose of the sunrise flushing the east, while far off the fringe of heavy clouds fled away, when she flung open the shutters to the morning; and how every moment since she had held herself tense, listening, straining, for the tragedy she felt the night held. "That old woman might attend to the 'phone," said her father, going back to his grievance. Montague had said long ago that with his all morning and all afternoon absences from the house while his work took him from field to vineyard, from vineyard to mountain-top, a telephone was useless. "I think I'll call up Frazier," he said at last, as he pushed back his chair, "he's near and might know." "Father, you must not; he would never understand his trying to reach home last night." "Neither do I!" "You'll hear soon enough, if there's anything to hear." "I shall be uneasy until I do."