“Good-bye, then, Margaret. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye; and may God Almighty bless you,” he said, and she felt the hands that rested against hers trembling. He looked long and searchingly into her face, with a scrutinizing steady gaze, as if he would photograph upon his mind its every line and feature. And then the light folds of her wrap were loosened, his hands fell heavily to his side, and he stepped back from her. Like a woman walking in her sleep she passed him, her long draperies trailing heavily after her as she crossed the hall and began to ascend the stairs. Her step was heavy and she moved slowly, and Louis, watching her from below with eyes that were wild with longing and lips that were stern with repression, held his breath in passionate expectation that, as she turned at the bend of the stairs, she might give him one last look. But her eyes, as the sweet profile came in view, were looking straight before her, and the tall white-clad figure was almost out of sight when, without willing it, without meaning it, absolutely without knowing it, he arrested her by a hurried, half-articulate call. “Margaret!” he cried, in a voice that seemed not to be his own, so strange and altered was it. The weary figure paused, and she turned and looked down at him. A little glimmer of the bright joy, which had been so lately smothered out of life, shot up in her heart as she heard him call her name, but when she looked at him, it died. He was standing with his arms folded tightly together, and a look of the most rigid self-control in his whole aspect. A man that loved her could never look at her like that, she thought, and she felt at that instant, more than ever, that she had deceived herself. Complete weariness seemed to master her. Her chief feeling was that she was tired to death. What was the use of going back? “I have something to say to you,” said Louis, in a voice that was colder than it had been yet. “Come back, for a moment only.” She was very weak, and it seemed easier to comply than to refuse; so, very silently and slowly, Margaret retraced her steps. As the beautiful white vision drew nearer, step by step, the young man’s whole heart and soul went out to meet her, but at the same moment his physical frame retreated, and he withdrew into the room before her, conscious only that he still held possession of himself, and that the spirit within him was still master of the body. Long habit had accustomed him to frequent renunciation. All these years he had been resisting and overcoming, in smaller things, with the conscious knowledge that he was thereby acquiring power which would enable him to conquer when greater temptations should come. And now he knew that his mightiest temptation was hard upon him.