"It was never intended we should part again," she murmured without looking up. "Oh! why should you have been brought here to-day? I never visit this place now, and to-day it must have been something more than chance that made me do so." "I don't believe in your Heaven, or why should it delight to torture any living creature as it is torturing us, here, to-day," broke jerkily from his set, dry lips. "Listen, Olive--darling, and you will understand why I must leave you again. I am destitute at this moment, utterly destitute; one who has gone down beneath the weight of what some might call a curse--but I don't believe in such things. And above and beside all this there is--there is--a barrier between us--a barrier of my own raising, and with its shadow I would never cloud your dear life." "Oh, Roland. What is it?" "Ah! If I were to tell you, you would shrink from me, now and for ever. You would even rush into yonder sea to escape from the horror wherewith my presence would inspire you. Why, even your love would turn to repugnance. Yet why should it?--except that the trammelled imagination of a canting world reads crime into what is no crime at all." "You are quite wrong. I would do none of all this," she answered bravely. A horrid suspicion that the rumours she had heard about him might be true flashed through her mind. What if he had done in a moment of weak desperation that which nothing but death could undo? "I had never expected to look upon your dear face again," he went on in the same tones of heart-wrung misery. "I set out this day to visit for the last time the scenes we had looked upon together, and to break my heart over the memories that they would evoke. Then, as I trod these stones which your feet had trodden, as on holy ground, I invoked the aid of the demon who rules the universe--offering my life and limitless future of eternity, if such there be--for one glimpse of you. And I was answered. I looked up and there you stood. Now I care nothing for what may happen. I can face it without fear--for my prayer was answered." Her tears were falling like rain, and for some time she could not speak--could only cling to him all the firmer. "You shall not go," she said at length. "You belong to me. A hundred times more than when all things went well with you. Oh, my darling, do not leave me. I claim you now, for you belong to me!" she reiterated passionately. It may be that to some lives comes a period such as that which these two had to undergo at this moment; it cannot be that it comes to many. But even while she spoke, another had claimed them both--ay, and had already made good his claim. With swift, remorseless subtlety the dark waves came sweeping in. The King of Terrors was about to exact the fulfilment of his awful bargain--and to exact it with interest. "Olive, come. We must go, and go quickly."