"Two o'clock!" she cried, with a start. "I must get back to Keswick while they are still asleep--asleep." She spoke the word again with a melancholy longing in her voice which was indescribably sad. "You will write, then," she resumed, "and break it off." Gordon nodded assent, and she turned away in search for something. The action helped to decide Gordon by pointing out the necessity of decision. What course should he take? He had thought to choose his path on careful reflection when Kate was on her way back to Keswick; but he saw now that would be too late. It would be time enough then to consider the consequences of his choice, how best to cope with them and force them to his service; but the choice itself could not be deferred. For if he let her go quietly without another word the matter would be settled finally, the choice determined, a prison wall raised to further effort. What course should he take? The question pressed urgently for an immediate answer. He went to the door and out into the porch. The sudden slip into night seemed to him a symbol of what his life would mean if he kept silence. His mind played with the idea and carried it further. It pictured him standing alone in the empty darkness and the girl behind him alone in the empty light. The beck, too, at the back of the house, whispered its music in his ears and pleaded with him. A timid hand was laid on his arm: Kate was by his side. "David!" "I was listening to the brook," he said. For a while they both stood quiet in the gloom of the porch. "What do you hear in it?" he asked. "I dare not tell you. What do you?" "I hear all my days to come flowing down and down with a sound of tears." "David!" she said, her voice breaking on the name. He had often noticed the wonderful clearness of her eyes, and they shone very softly on him now. He drew her towards him in the gloom of the porch. "Kitty!" he whispered, "tell me that it isn't true! Tell me I have been dreaming! I will believe you. I must believe you. For if I lose faith in you, I lose faith in everything. You have been the light of my life, making the world real. If that dies out, I live in the dark, always."