The pulse in her lovely throat throbbed violently, and watching her lift one hand there with the old childish effort to loosen the stricture, his lips tightened and he stepped closer. "And if I decline to accept, to permit your renunciation of my name, which is more sacred since you have worn it? To make a football of God's statute is as little my purpose as is yours. Sometimes I have cheated myself with the forlorn hope that absence might possibly help me to accomplish that which long association failed to bring me. After years of suffering, of sombre retrospection, I hope I have come back less a Tartar than when we parted. Then I surrendered you entirely--absolutely. I do so still. I claim no more rights or privileges than I possessed before that marriage ceremony made you nominally mine; but if your great pity for the lonely man who never loved any other woman can possibly grow into a deeper feeling, will you try to forgive my harshness that dreadful night? Knowing what you are to me, will you come to me?" "Come to you who repudiated me! By what right dare you suppose, expect----" "I have no right even to hope, but my hungry heart dares, and will dare desperate chances." "You told me your confidence was dead as your love. The scar of that brand can never heal." "Yes, I said many bitter, cruel things in the hot rage of my disappointment, that I should be glad to forget. In extenuation, you must remember that you beckoned me unexpectedly to heaven, and when I was thrust out the crash unhinged me. It was for your own sake I asked you to put me out of your life; to save you from the horrible martyrdom of unloving wifehood, from dragging through life the ball and chain of a galling, intolerable tie. To put you out of mine I knew was as impossible in future years as I had found it in the past. In my farewell note I considered your peace of mind, not my own. If you could realize all you are to me, perhaps you might understand better what that voluntary surrender of your precious self cost me, when, by the law of God and of man, you belonged to me." She had avoided meeting his eyes; the strain set her lips to quivering, increased the strangling grip on her throat, and unconsciously her fingers clutched and wrung one another. "After three years of dreary absence you have not even a friendly hand to offer to the man who has carried you in his heart ever since you wore muslin aprons--who holds you the one love of his life?" "Mr. Herriott, you ceased to love me when you ceased to trust me, else all these years----" She paused, warned by the treacherous quiver in her voice. He stood quite still, and after a moment opened his arms. "My sweetheart, will you try me? Will you grant me the privilege of convincing you?" She shook her head. Something in his eyes dazzled her, and an alarming pallor overspread her face, blanching her lips.