"Not from the chivalric motives you have done me the honor to impute to me. I am no walking code of priggish courtesy; I am merely a man who knows exactly what he wants most, and, missing that, deceives himself with nothing less. I am here to-day solely to see, at least once more, the face that has held my heart in bondage since you were a child. To intrude upon you was not my purpose, and I did not intend to violate my self-imposed limit of absolute silence, but I could not resist the longing to look into your eyes, to hear your voice; and I thought I was strong enough to watch you a little while, without your knowledge, and go away forever, leaving you in peace. I might have known better. The sight of you shivered my own compact. I have suffered far more than you, and if my harshness wounded you beyond forgiveness, remember, oh, remember, how long I have loved you!" "I can remember only that your last spoken words were a vehement request that I should forget you." Her lower lip fluttered, and she caught it between her teeth. "Yes, but if farewell utterances are inexorably binding, you must pardon me if I remind you of yours. All through the gloom and bitterness of our separation a sacred, sweet voice has sounded in my ears the precious words of promise you whispered when your arms clasped my neck, and your dear face lay on my heart: 'You will never be out of my life--my own Mr. Noel.'" A vivid rose stole into her cheeks, and she leaned farther back to increase the space between them. "I had not then received my text-book--had not learned the lesson assigned. After that, you wrote your final mandate: 'My freedom was complete,' and you urged me to use it in any way most 'conducive to the happiness so unwisely imperilled' by my rash marriage. I shall endeavor to follow your counsel, and if you had waited one day later, you would have been spared this unpleasant duty-visit. I go away to-night, and never again shall you be annoyed by even hearing of me. Mr. Herriott, in spite of all your wrongs, at the last you trusted your name to my keeping. I have indeed held it 'sacred as the Grail,' and now I return it to you as stainless as when you gave it. I am leaving America to find an obscure resting-place in a strange land where I shall be known only by the name to which I was born; and, once across the ocean, I can escape, perhaps, the social gibbet from which dangle, deservedly, 'women with histories.' I have no need of your name, noble though it is, to help me keep my oath to God. Divorce I hold a shameful blot on true womanhood, a menace to domestic and national morality, an insult to the Lord. Human law can no more annul my marriage than my baptismal vow; neither was made to man; both stand on that divine record only death can erase; they are locked among the sacraments of God, _'so long as ye both shall live.'_ Your freedom is as unconditional as you may wish, and that court of release which you commended to me, is equally open to you."