“Nor I. But if it takes the whole of my life to find it out, it shall not remain a mystery,” he said; and then he stood erect and silent before her. CHAPTER XXIV. FAREWELL. While she lived Lady Hermione never forgot the look of anguish that he gave her; a long, lingering, steady gaze such as a dying man fixes at times on the face of a beloved wife or child. Then he came a step nearer to her. “I did not know, Hermione,” he said, “that life could be harder than I have hitherto found it. It will be harder now.” “Why?” she asked, gently. “Because I shall ever have before my mind what I have lost. Until now existence has been tolerable, because I have tried to fill it with bitter thoughts of you. In my own mind a hundred times a day I have called you treacherous, false, cruel, and now my angel stands in her place again, the truest and dearest of women, the woman I have loved, and who has loved me! Hermione, my life will be so hard to bear that, if it please Heaven, I could fain die standing here before you now.” “Brave men do not seek refuge in death,” she replied, “rather in active duties of life.” “Some men. You see, I have thrown my whole existence on one stake; that stake was you, and I have lost you! Now I have to gather up the broken threads of my life and do with them as best I can.” She was weeping silently. He saw the teardrops falling, and a mad impulse seized him to clasp her in his arms and kiss them away. That he trampled the impulse under foot showed how dearly he loved her. “I am glad that we have met. Once more the sun of pure womanhood shines for me. While I thought you false, Hermione, all heaven and earth seemed false, too. But there is one thing more--you may speak freely to me, Hermione; it is but as though one or the other of us was dying--was there no truth in the rumor that you were engaged to Kenelm Eyrle?” “No; none. Mr. Eyrle has never loved or cared for me in his life.” “Clarice believed it,” he said, musingly, and the pale face before him grew whiter. “She was deceived,” said Lady Hermione, briefly; “and now, Ronald, it seems to me that we must say farewell; it must be for the last time. We cannot meet as friends. Honor is dearer than life to both of us; therefore, we must not meet again.” “Oh, my lost love,” he moaned, stretching out his hands to her, “how shall I bear it?” She went up to him, and there was an expression of pity and love on her face that made it divine. She took both his hands in her own and held them there. “You will be brave and true to yourself, Ronald. Do not let me have the smart all my life long of knowing that love for me has led you further from heaven; let it, rather, take you nearer. I have some quaint thoughts, and one is that in another world God makes our lives complete. Perhaps there, in that land where the gates are of jasper and the walls of pearl, we may be together--who knows? Looking to that time, we will forget the darkness and sorrow of this.”