He follows her, baffled and miserable, gnashing his teeth. Is it possible that the gyves he had thought to have cast off for ever are here, manacling him again as soon as he tries to make one free step? Is the old love to throttle him now with the same strangling clasp, dead, that it had done living? Before God, no! Not if he can hinder it. She has not waited for him at the tower-foot; but he overtakes her before she has reached the High Street, and without asking her leave. The crowd on the bridge has dispersed. The city clocks, with their variously-toned voices, are striking six; to their daily toil the workmen, with tools on back, are swinging along. To them there is certainly nothing unfamiliar, probably nothing lovely, in the morning's marvellous clean novelty, that novelty renewed each dawning, as if God had said not once only but day by day, 'Lo, I make all things new!' 'You asked me a question just now,' says Talbot abruptly. 'Yes.' 'And I did not answer it; I could not. I cannot answer it now. As long as you and I shall live, I can never answer it!' He stops, pale and panting, and looks at her with a passionate anxiety. O God! Is Betty's shadow to come between them still? Betty renouncing and renounced; Betty gone, swept away, vanished. Is she still to thrust herself between him and his new heaven? Still to be his bane, his evil demon? Still to lay waste that life, five of whose prime years she has already burnt and withered? If it be so, then verily and indeed his sin has found him out. In passionate anxiety he looks at his companion; but she is holding her head low, and he cannot get a good view of her face. 'Why do you walk so fast?' he asks irritably, his eyes taking in the rapidly diminishing space that lies before him. 'Is not the distance short enough in all conscience without your lessening it? Walk slower.' She slackens her pace; but still she does not speak. 'You asked me why I went away?' he continues almost in a whisper, and with his heart beating like a steam-ram. 'Does that mean that it made any difference to you? May I make it mean that it did? Stay--do not speak--I will not let it mean anything else. If you say that it did not, I will not believe you. I cannot afford to believe you!' He has forbidden her to speak, and yet now he pauses, hanging in a suspense that is almost ungovernable--for they have passed Queen's classic front, are passing 'All Souls'--upon her slow-coming words. There is a little stir upon her face; a tiny hovering smile. 'I was sorry that you went without your lavender!' 'I am coming back for it,' he cries passionately, the joy-tide sweeping up over his heart to his lips, and almost drowning his words. 'Coming back for it--for it and for all else that I left behind me!' The smile spreads, red and wavering. 'You left nothing else; I sent all your books after you.'