She pauses with her arms folded over the back of a chair, and regards him sorrowfully. Colonel Lockhart can see that she has been weeping bitterly. Her tremulous lips part to answer him, then close without a sound. He goes up to her and takes one white, jeweled hand fondly into his own. "Tell me what troubles you, Vera," he whispers gently. "Can you not guess, Philip? It is because I must part from you," she answers sadly. "But why must you do so, Vera?" he asks, gravely, touched to the heart by her drooping and despondent attitude. "I cannot tell you," she answers sadly, with a heavy sigh. "Perhaps you have ceased to love me," her lover exclaims, almost sternly. She starts and fixes her dark eyes reproachfully on his face. "Oh, would that I had!" she exclaims. "This parting would then be easier to bear!" They regard each other a moment with painful intentness. The marks of misery on her face are too plain to be mistaken, and the wonder deepens on his own. "Vera, why are you so mysterious?" he asks, anxiously. "If you throw me over like this, I have at least a right to know the reason why." "You shall know--soon," she answers, almost bitterly. Then she lifts her eyes to his face pleadingly. "Oh, Philip, do not torture me," she cries wildly. "We must part! There is no help nor hope for us! A terrible barrier has risen between us! I have a terrible duty to perform, and there is no turning back for me. But, oh, Philip, if I could persuade you to go away now--at once--where you might never hear or know the fatal secret that has come between us! Darling, let me beg you," she falls suddenly on her knees before him, "to take me at my word and put the whole width of the world between us!" He lifts her up and wipes the streaming tears from her beautiful eyes. "My darling, you make it hard for me to refuse you," he answers, in sorrow and perplexity, "but do you think I could be coward enough to desert you when trouble and sorrow hung over your head? I am a soldier, Vera. I cannot show the white feather. If sorrow comes I will be by your side and help you to bear it." "_You_, of all others, could help me the least," she answers, brokenly. And again his noble, handsome face clouds over with wonder and sorrow. "I will try, at least," he answers, with sad firmness. "Do not ask me to leave you, Vera, I cannot do it. Oh, darling, are you sure, quite sure, that we need really part? That you cannot be my wife?" "I am as sure of it as if one or the other of us lay at this moment in the coffin," she answers, drearily. "And that barrier, Vera, will it always stand?" he asks. "Always, unless death should remove it," she answers, with a shudder; and with a moan, she continues: "Once I believed that death had already stricken it from my path, and I was so happy, Philip--happy in your love and mine. But the grim specter of the past has risen to haunt me. I can never be your wife. I can never know one moment's happiness in life again."